Skip to main content

Full text of "On the origin of universities and academical degrees"

See other formats


Google 



This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project 

to make the world's books discoverable online. 

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject 

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books 

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. 

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the 

publisher to a library and finally to you. 

Usage guidelines 

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the 
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to 
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. 
We also ask that you: 

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for 
personal, non-commercial purposes. 

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine 
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the 
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. 

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find 
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. 

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just 
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other 
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of 
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner 
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe. 

About Google Book Search 

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers 
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web 

at |http: //books .google .com/I 



600002368P 



(fo4. 



ON THE 



ORIGIN OF UNIVERSITIES. 



LONDON : 
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENT LEY, 

Dor8et*stre<!t, FIeet-8tre«t. 



ORIGIN OF UNIVERSITIES 



ACADEMICAL DEGREES. 



HENRY MALDEN, MA. 




LONDON: X^'/. 

PRINTED FOR JOHN TAYLOK, 



UPPER OOWER 8THEET. 

1835. 



bolt- 



PREFACE. 



Last year the Petitions for and against the grant 
of a Charter to the University of London were re- 
ferred to a Committee of the Privy Council, and 
counsel heard in support of them. An inten- 
tion was entertained of publishing the whole ar- 
gument ; and I was requested to write a Prelimi- 
nary Dissertation on the antiquities of the subject, 
that is, on the Origin of Universities and Acade- 
mical Degrees. This I did accordingly; but the 
intention of publishing the argument was dropped ; 
and my manuscript remained in my hands. 

I knew very well that my dissertation was very 
imperfect. It had been written hastily. Many 
books which I should have been glad to consult, 
and those not rare ones, it so happened that I had 
not been able to procure. Others, such, for ex 



VI PREFACE. 

ample, as Wood's History and Antiquities of the 
University of Oxford, I had consulted at the Bri- 
tish Museum ; but my essay was written, partly 
when I was confined to a sick room, partly when I 
was a convalescent in the country ; so that I was 
obliged to be content with a few references, A 
complete History of Universities would necessarily 
be a work of some magnitude. My essay was 
short, and contained nothing more than a slight 
sketch of the early History and Constitution of 
the two most ancient and celebrated Universities 
on the Continent, Paris and Bologna, and a similar 
sketch of those of our own country; and this 
sketch, slight as it was, was defective in many 
parts. 

For these reasons, when my dissertation was 
not used for the purpose for which it was written, 
I did not think of presenting it to the public as a 
separate work ; and I could not spare time to make 
it complete. But afler a while, when I called to 
mind, that not only the question of the charter of 
the University of London had been brought before 
Parliament, but the much more important question 



PREFACE. Vll 

of the admission of dissenters to Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, and that the discussion was sure to be 
renewed ; and when I considered the very great 
ignorance of the nature and primitive constitution 
of the universities, which had been shown on all 
sides, in and out of parliament, by those who had 
spoken and those who had written on the subject ; 
it appeared to me, that even this short essay, 
which, imperfect as it is, I believe to be correct 
as far as it goes, might give some useful informa- 
tion, and might prevent some mischievous mis- 
takes. In this hope of doing good I made up my 
mind to publish it. 

There are one or two passages, in which, from 
the facts stated, an argument is drawn in favour 
of the pretensions of the University of London. 
These would have been consistent enough, if the 
dissertation had been published, as I intended it to 
be, as an Introduction to the Report of the argu- 
ment before the Privy Council. I am aware that 
in a separate work they are out of place : but I 
have suffered them to stand as they were originally 
written. 



VIU PREFACE. 

When I wrote these pages, I was not aware of 
the existence of Meiners* History of the Univer- 
sities of Europe, (Geschichte der Enstehung und 
Entwickelung der Hohen Schulen unsers Erd- 
theils; Gottingen, 1805 ;) a work which would have 
saved me almost all my labour of research. Some 
references to it have been introduced in correcting 
the press. 



May 27, 1835. 



NOTICE. 

The chief authorities which have been consulted 
in the following dissertation are these : — 

1. CoNRiNGii De Antiquitatibus Academicis 
Dissertationes Septem cum Supplementis. Con- 
ringius was a professor in the University of Hel- 
mestad, founded by Julius Duke of Brunswick and 
Lunenburg in 1576. His dissertations were ori- 
ginally delivered in the form of orations, on occa- 
sions of academical solemnity. The second edi- 
tion, which he published with the supplements, 
bears the date 1674. We have used the edition 
printed at Goettingen in 1739. 

2. lo. Christ. Itteri Moeno-Frarwofurtensis De 
Houoribus sive Gradibus Academicis Liber. The 
first edition of this work was a small duodecimo ; 
the second a quarto. The latter bears the date 
1698. In almost all matters of antiquity Itter 
relies upon the authority of Conringius. In the 
Appendix to the second edition is Erici Mauritii 
De Honorum Academicorum Origine Oratio, which 
contains a clear summary of the results of the 
investigations of Conringius. 



X NOTICE. 

3. Heumanni Bibliotheca Historica Academica, 
appended to the Goettingen edition of Conringius. 
In this work is a short summary of the contents of 
Du Boullay's History of the University of Paris.* 

4. Geschichte des Romischen Rechts im mittel 
alter, etc. History of the Roman Law in the Mid- 
dle Ages, by Frederic Charles von Savigny, The 
third volume of this work contains an account of 
the Ancient Universities of Europe, especially of 
Bologna. I have not been able to use the ori- 
ginal work; but I have relied upon a series of 
abstracts of the successive volumes published in 
the Antologia^ by the advocate P. Capei, and after- 
wards collected into a separate volume. These 
abstracts are sufficiently full, since they make a 
work of 200 closely printed pages. 

5. Edinburgh Review, No. cvi. art. vi. " On 
the Universities of England — Oxford." 

6. Dyer's Privileges of the University of Cam- 
bridge. 

7. Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry 
into the State of the Universities of Scotland. 
1831. 

* Meiners' copious citations have enabled me to extend the 
number of my references to Du BouUay. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Introduction 1 

Twelfth Century the period of the Origin of Uni- 
versities 2 

University of Paris 3 

Tradition of its foundation by Charlemagne • . ib. 
Connected with a school attached to the church of 

Ste. Genevieve 5 

The Trivium and Quadrivium .... 6 

Theol(^cal School 7 

Division of the University into Four Nations . 8 
Licences to teach granted by the Chancellor of Ste. 

Genevieve 9 

Meaning of the term Untv^r^/y . . . .11 

Origin of Theol(^cal Degrees .... 15 

of Degrees in Arts 19 

Reason why the confirmation of the Popes was sought when 

new Universities were founded . . . 21 

Origin of the term Bachelor 22 

Formation of the Faculties of Theology, Law, and Me- 
dicine in the University of Paris ... 24 

Government of the University 25 

Study of the Civil Law forbidden .... 26 

Privileges of the University 27 



xii CONTENTS. 

Page 
Adjudged by the Parliament of Paris to be a secular 

Corporation 31 

Schools ib. 

Origin of Hospitiay or Hostels, and its causes . . 32 

Colleges 33 

Salaries of Professors 36 

University of Bologna 37 

Imerius 38 

He begins to expound the Civil Law .... 39 

Code of Justinian little known in the Western Empire 41 

Titles of the teachers of Law at Bologua ... 44 

^e Decretum and Canon Law 45 

School of Arts at Bologna 46 

of Medicine 47 

— !> — of Theology 48 

Privil^^ conferred by Emperor Frederic I. . , ib. 

Constitution and Government of the University 52 

Institution of Degrees 54 

Collies of the Faculties 55 

Admission to Degrees 57 

Salaried Professors 60 

Jurisdiction of the Rector 62 

Female Graduates and Professors .... 63 

University of Salerno 64 

Medical Ordinance of Frederic II 66 

University of Naples 70 

University of Oxford : tradition of its foundation 

by Alfred ib. 

Earliest teachers of Theology and Civil Law . . 7*2 

Royal Charters 75 

Act of Incorporation, 13 EUz. a. d. 1570 • . ib. 
Resistance of the civil power to the authority of the 

Popes in the English Universities ... 77 

Early History of Oxford 78 



• • • 



CONTENTS. XUl 

Page 

Colleges 80 

Halls 81 

Difficulty of establishing new Halls ... 84 

Chamberdekyns • . 85 

Admission of Dissenters to the Universities . . 86 

University of Cambridge : its origin. ... 91 

Early documents respecting it .... 93 

Royal Charters 97 

Papal Bulls 98 

Distinction between studium and universitas . . 100 

Office of Chancellor in Universities . . . t6. 
Gradual exemption of Cambridge from ecclesiastical 

jurisdiction 102 

Hospitia, Halls, and Colleges . . . 105 & 1 06 

English Universities not divided into nations . .108 
Influence of collegiate foundations on the teaching and 

government of the English Universities . 109 

Original signification of Degrees • . , ib. 

Regents 112 

Non-Regents 113 

Lectures of Masters and Doctors supplanted by lec- 
tures of public Professors . . . . 115 
Government of Continental Universities devolved 

upon Professors 118 

Institution of Professorships at Oxford . . . 119 

— — — — ^— Cambridge . .120 

Professors formerly the organs of the Instruction of 

the Universities 123 

Change of system at Oxford . . . • 125 

— ^— Cambridge . . 126 

Examinations at Cambridge . . . . 132 

Collie Tuition 134 

Private Tuition 136 



XIV CONTENTS. 

Page 
Effect of collegiate lotmdations on the government of 

the Universities 138 

Univeesity op London . . . . . 143 

Universities of Scotland 144 

St. Andrew's 147 

Glasgow 153 

Distinction between the University and the College 159 

Aberdeen : King's College 166 

Marischal College 1 67 

Edinburgh iO. 

Advantages of the constitution of the University of 

Edinburgh . . . . . 171 

Constitution of the University of London . . 172 



ON THE 

ORIGIN OF UNIVERSITIES, 

&C. 



A PETITION to the Crown, praying that a new 
University may be legally recognised and sanc- 
tioned by royal authority, and that it may be en- 
dowed with the ordinary privileges of universities, 
is a novel event in this country. The support 
which the petition of the University of London 
has received from the address of the House of 
Commons, has attracted attention to the subject 
in an especial degree. The Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge are of such high antiquity, that we 
are accustomed to look upon them as having an im- 
memorial existence; and few but professed anti- 
quaries know anything of their early history. But 
the proposition to establish a new university natu- 
rally excites a curiosity to know the origin of uni- 
versities in general ; in what manner, and by what 
authority, the existing universities of our own coun- 
try, and of the other kingdoms of Europe, have been 

B 



2 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

constituted ; and how they have been invested with 
those privileges which they now enjoy. 

The oldest universities of Europe sprung up in 
the twelfth century, and were formed by the zeal 
and enterprise of learned men, who undertook to 
deliver public instruction to all who were desirous of 
hearing them. The first teachers soon found assist- 
ants and rivals : students resorted in great numbers 
to the sources of knowledge thus opened to them : 
and from this voluntary concourse of teachers and 
learners the schools arose, which were afterwards 
recognised as public bodies, and entitled Universi- 
ties, and which served as models for those which 
in later times were founded and established by 
public authority. Some of the oldest universities 
had traditions of their foundation at a more re- 
mote period by royal or imperial authority, and 
these traditions might be nominally true : but 
as far as their real life, and power, and distinc- 
tive character are concerned, their origin was in 
fact spontaneous, and is to be ascribed to the ge- 
neral excitement of the intellect which pervaded 
Europe in the twelfth century. In that century the 
study of law and of theology was revived ; medicine 
assumed the form of a science ; the learning of the 
Arabians began to be transfused into Europe; 
schools were opened ; the modern languages, which 
arose from the intermixture of the Latin with the 
Northern tongues, began to be cultivated and re- 



UNIVERSITIES. 3 

duced to form ; and poets sprung up abundantly, 
especially in the south and north of France, the 
Langue d'Oc, and the Langue d'Oil. This general 
revival of intellectual activity is probably to be 
attributed to the violent excitement of the first 
crusade. 

The University of Paris was one of the oldest 
universities in Europe; and indeed it has a fair 
claim to be considered as the oldest. For some 
centuries it was the most famous and the most 
frequented of all seats of learning, and exercised 
the greatest influence upon the public mind of 
Christendom. The greater number of universities 
throughout Europe assumed its form and adopted 
its customs ; and this was especially the case with 
the universities of our own country. With this 
ancient school, therefore, we shall begin our 
researches. 

It was the old tradition of the University of Paris, 
that it was founded by Charlemagne ; and conse- 
quently its origin was referred to the year 800, or 
thereabout. This tradition has been rejected by all 
recent writers who have examined the matter, and 
treated as an idle tale. It rests upon no distinct 
evidence ; and even those antiquaries who maintain 
it, are constrained to confess, that for nearly three 
centuries after the death of Charlemagne the uni- 
versity had fallen into a state of almost utter decay, 
and that scarcely a shadow or vestige of letters 



4 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

was to be found in Paris.^ Mr. Hallam states, on 
the authority of Cr6vier, that *' the first who is said 
to have read lectures at Paris was Remigius of 
Auxerre, about the year 900 :"f and he adds, " For 
the two next centuries the history of this school is 
very obscure ; and it would be hard to prove an 
unbroken continuity, or at least a dependence and 
connexion of its professors." 

It is possible, however, that the ancient tradition 
was not altogether without foundation. Charle- 
magne not only was a patron of learned men, and 
encouraged them to resort to his court, but he ex- 
erted himself strenuously to diffuse some portion of 
education among his subjects generally, and parti- 
cularly among the clergy and those designed for the 
sacred profession. For this purpose he enacted that 
schools should be established in all episcopal and 
collegiate churches, and that they should be open 
to all students. This rule he vigorously enforced, 
and it was occasionally revived by his successors ; 
although through the ravages of the Normans, the 
general dislocation of society, and the sloth and 
ignorance of the monks and canons of the tenth 
century, this wholesome institution fell gradually 

« 

* Du BouUay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, torn. i. 
pp. 178, 288. 

f Europe during the Middle Ages, chap. ix. part ii. He 
refers to Cr6vier*s Uistoire de PUniv.de Paris, t. i. p. 66. 



UNIVERSITIES. 5 

into disuse .* Now it was universally allowed, that 
the most ancient part of the University of Paris 
was the faculty of arts or philosophy. This faculty 
originally constituted the whole university ; and the 
faculties of theology, law, and medicine, were not 
added till a later period. In consequence of this 
superior antiquity, the rector of the university was 
always chosen from the artistce, or graduates in arts ; 
and a doctor of the higher faculties was ineligible. 
Moreover, this ancient faculty had a special con- 
nexion with the church of Ste. Genevieve. The 
chancellor of the church of Ste. Genevieve was 
always the chancellor of the faculty of arts ; al- 
though the bishop of Paris was the chancellor of 
the other three faculties, and was considered as the 
chancellor of the university at large.f It is pos- 
sible that the faculty of arts may have grown out of 
a school attached to the church of Ste. Genevieve, 
according to the ordinance of Charlemagne; but 
this bare possibility is all the proof that can be 
shown on behalf of the foundation of the university 
by the great Emperor of the West. 

* Conringius de Antiquit. Academ. Dissert, i. s. 43, and 
Dissert, iii. s. 5. with the Supplements. 

if Conringius, Diss. i. s. 43. The superior antiquity of the 
faculty of arts is beyond all question. It is asserted by Du 
Boullay and all other writers, and expressly admitted by File- 
sac in his History of the Statutes of the Faculty of Theology in 
the University of Paris. 



b ON THE ORIGIN OF 

The learning which was communicated in this 
ancient school, as in all others of the same age, was 
comprised in two courses, called the Trivium, and 
the Quadrivium. The first included grammar, logic, 
and rhetoric; the second, arithmetic, geometry, 
astronomy, and music. These were the seven 
liberal arts. In fact, the objects of study were then, 
as they are now at Oxford and Cambridge, philology 
and mathematical science. Oxford has shown a 
disinclination to rise above the Trivium : Cambridge, 
while it does not neglect the Trivium, has manifested 
a peculiar predilection for the nobler Quadrivium ; 
although it is to be feared that music has fallen 
from its honourable station among the seven arts. 
It may be easily imagined, that in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries the extent of learning which 
was comprehended under these seven heads was 
not very large : but little as it was, not many scho- 
lars proceeded beyond the Trivium ; and the student 
who had mastered both courses was looked upon as 
a person of profound erudition. For example, a 
barbarous verse has been preserved in commenda- 
tion of the learning of Alan of the Isles, who ap- 
pears to have been one of the most famous scholars 
of his time, and who taught in the school of Paris : 
'< Qui tria, qui septem, omne qui scibile novit."* 

But the event which gave a new life to the Uni- 

* Conringius, Suppl. xlvi. 



UNIVERSITIES. 7 

versity of Paris, and from which in fact its existence 
as a university must be dated, was that from the 
beginning of the twelfth century Paris became the 
resort of learned men, who attached themselves in 
some sort to the existing school of arts, but, leaving 
to inferior teachers this preliminary learning, deli- 
vered public lectures in theology. Filesac enu- 
merates the most celebrated of these theologians 
who flourished during the reign of Louis VII. the 
father of Philip Augustus:— Anselm of Latrdun, the 
preceptor of Peter Abelard ; William of Champeaux, 
who previously, according to Mr. Hallam, at the 
very beginning of the century, had taught logic and 
philosophy, and must consequently have lectured in 
the school of arts ; Peter Abelard himself, whose 
genius and eloquence, and boldness in speculation, 
allured a multitude of enthusiastic disciples ; and 
Peter Lombard, the pupil of Abelard, whose Book 
of Sentences became a text-book in scholastic theo- 
^ogYi and supplanted even the Scriptures them- 
selves.* 

These distinguished teachers collected around 
them a crowd of hearers ; and the success of the 

* Filesac in Gonringius, Dissert, iii. s. 17. See also Europe 
daring the Middle Ages, chap. ix. part ii. In Conringius, 
Suppl. zlvi. a fuller list of the masters of the theological 
school is given from Henry, a monk of Ghent, the con- 
tinoator of a work ^' De Scriptoribus Ecdesiasticis," who 
seems to have been Filesac's authority. 



\ 



10 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

ters, should be permitted to direct schools without 
any molestation or exaction."* 

Savigny, however, who mentions this constitu- 
tion, mentions a letter of the same pontiff, and 
very nearly of the same date, which has escaped 
the vigilance of Conringius, by which Peter Comes- 
tor, who was then chancellor of the school of Paris, 
was specially excepted and relieved from the pro- 
hibition against taking fees for licences to teach. 
This is the earliest public document extant which 
has reference to the University of Paris. It ap- 
piears, as might be expected, that the exception 
had greater force than the general rule ; for in 
the year 1215, when Innocent III. by his legate, 
Robert de Cour^on, regulated the institutions of 
the university, he found it necessary to renew 
the ordinance that nothing should be given to 
the chancellor for granting licences.f 

These regulations of Innocent III. implied the 
recognition and sanction of the university by the 
papal see ; a sanction which was especially valu- 

* " Quicunque viri idonei et literati voluerint regere studia 
literamm, sine molestia et exactione qualibet scholas regere 
permittantiir.'' Decretal. Lib. y. tit. 5, in Conringius, Diss, 
iv. s. 24. 

f Itter, De Grad. Academ. cap. iv. s. 22. Mr. Hallam, 
who has mentioned this first statute for regulating the disci- 
pline of the university in a note, Ed. 4, vol. iii. p. 524, has 
by mistake named Honorius III . the successor of Innocent, 
as the pope by whom it was given. 



UNIVERSITIES. 1 1 

able, and indeed necessary to its continued exist- 
ence, when theology had become its leading study 
and its distinguishing characteristic. In this or- 
dinance, the term University was applied for the 
first time to the Parisian school.* 

There are few words, the origin of which has 
been so utterly forgotten, or their meaning so 
grossly mistaken, as the term University. By 
many persons, who have taken their notion of the 
word merely from the English universities, it is 
commonly supposed that a university necessarily 
means a collection and union of colleges ; that it 
is a great corporation embodying in one the smaller 
and subordinate collegiate corporations. This mis- 
conception seems to have been entertained even 
by the author of " A Reply to the Calumnies of 
the Edinburgh Review ;" a pamphlet commonly 
ascribed to Dr. Copleston, late Provost of Oriel 
College, Oxford, and now Bishop of LlandafF. He 
asserts without any misgiving, that " The Univer- 
sity of Oxford is not a national foundation. It is a 
congeries of foundations, originating, some in royal 
munificence, but more in private piety and bounty. 
They are moulded indeed into one corporation; but 
each one of our twenty colleges is a corporation by 

♦ Savigny. There is, however, a letter of Innocent, of the 
year 1209, in which the term is used : " Doctoribus et uni- 

versis scholaribus Parisiensibus universitatem ves- 

tram rogamus, £cc." Du Boullay, iii. p. 52. 



12 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

itself." How false this notion is, will appear more 
clearly when we come to speak of the origin of col- 
leges : but no one can entertain it, who is once re- 
minded how many universities exist in which there 
are no colleges. In the German universities at the 
present day there are in general no colleges, nor 
any foundations bearing an analogy to them. Even 
if we look to the Scotch universities, we shall find 
that Edinburgh, although it is called a college, is 
merely a university, and has nothing in common 
with the English meaning of the term college ; and 
at Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrew's, the col- 
leges are corporations endowed for the benefit of 
the principals- and professors, and not of the stu- 
dents; and scarcely a single student resides in 
College chambers.* It need not be explained how 
difierent these institutions are from the colleges of 
the English universities. At Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, the universities existed before a single 
college was endowed ; and the universities would 
continue to exist, with all their rights and privi- 
leges unimpaired, even if the property of all the 
colleges were confiscated, and their buildings level- 
led with the ground. If they exercised their pro- 
per functions, and performed their proper duties, 
they might continue to be the instruments of na- 
tional education. 

* Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Universities 
of Scotland, p. 283. 



UNIVERSITIES. 13 

It may seem superfluous to have dwelt thus long 
upon this misconception of the meaning of the 
name University ; but it is bad policy to be above 
contradicting a vulgar error. There is another 
error, which has an appearance of greater learning, 
and into which even such learned men as Mosheim, 
Tiraboschi, and Mr. Waddington have fallen '* that 
universities are so called because they profess to 
teach universal learning. This is a mere quibble 
upon the word. In the language of the civil law 
all corporations ^^ were called universitcUeSf as form- 
ing one whole out of many individuals.*'t In the 
German jurisconsults universitas is the word for a 
corporate town.j: In Italy it was applied to the 
incorporated trades in the cities. In ecclesiastical 
language, the term was sometimes applied to a 
number of churches united under the superintend- 
ence of one archdeacon. In a papal rescript of 
the year 688, it is used of the body of canons of 
the church of Pisa.§ By applying the term, there- 

* See Thoughts on the Advancement of Academical Educa- 
tion in England, by James Yates, M.A. p. 165 ; and History 
of the Church, by the Rev. George Waddington, p. 469. 

-)- Blackstone's Commentaries, voL i. chap. 18. 

X See Ducange in v. In one example cited by him, it 
seems to be used by a king of France to denote his whole 
realm. 

§ Dyer's Privileges of the University of Cambridge, vol. i. 
p. 384. 



16 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

blish the rule, that no one should be allowed to 
teach without their approbation and permission. 
This of course led to an examination of the can- 
didates, and to a public trial of their ability, and to 
a formal ceremony for their admission to the dig- 
nity of teachers or doctors^ 

Of the date of this innovation we are not exactly 
informed. All that Filesac ventures to assert is, 
that the constitution of the theological faculty was 
complete before the end of the thirteenth century ; 
which is undoubtedly true. But the necessity of 
a formal admission to the privilege of teaching was 
firmly established long before that time ; and, as 
we have said before, he carries down too late what 
may be called the voluntary condition of the fa- 
culty. On the other hand, Antony a Wood, who 
asserts that the title of doctor in theology had its 
origin at Paris about the year 1151, and thence 
shortly afterwards was adopted at Bologna and 
at Oxford, appears to have placed the origin of 
the dignity too early, if he conceived that it 
was a title conferred by authority and with cere- 
mony. No doubt, in the middle of the twelfth 
century, the actual doctors or teachers, whether 
at Paris, Bologna, or Oxford, were called doctors 
or teachers ; but the appellation had nothing tech- 

* Conringius, Dissert, iii. s. 17. See also Erid Mauritii 
Orat. de Honor. Academ. Orig. p. 36. 



UNIVERSITIES. 17 

nical in it* Yet Wood's position is confirmed 
by an old writer cited by Du Boullay,t who 
says that the degrees of bachelor and doctor 
took their rise among the students of Peter Lom- 
bard's Book of Sentences, which was published 
about 1151. One of the earliest examples, if it 
be not the very earliest, of which there is docu- 
mentary evidence, in which the title of doctor 
appears to have been an honourable distinction 
and not merely a descriptive appellation, occurs in 
a remarkable person, Stephen Langton, archbishop 
of Canterbury, whose nomination to the vacant see 
occasioned the great struggle between King John 
and Pope Innocent III. Innocent, in letters of the 
date 1207, declares, that ^^ it was not to be im- 
puted as a fault to Langton, but rather to be re- 
membered to his honour, that he had spent a long 
time at Paris in liberal studies, and made so great 
proficiency, that he earned the dignity of doctor, 
not only in the liberal faculties, but also in theolo- 
gical studies/'^: Innocent himself, according to 
his own testimony, was a master of theology in the 
University of Paris ; but this probably means only 

* Hist, et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. lib. i. p. 24. 

t T. ii. p. 682. 

I **- Ut meruerit esse doctor." — Itter, De Orad. Academ. 
cap. iv. 8. 24 ; on the authority of Spelman's Glossary, voc 
Magistery where reference is made to Matth. Paris, Hist. 
Angl. pag. m. 224. 

C 



18 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

that he taught in the schools.* However this may 
be, Rigord, the contemporary chronicler of Philip 
Augustus, asserts, that in the year 1209 the Uni- 
v-ersity of Paris was in the most flourishing con- 
dition, and that distinct degrees in the four greater 
faculties were in use.f Innocentius Gentilletus, 
the author of an Examination of the Council of 
Trent, asserts in the very beginning of his book, 
that the degrees of doctor and bachelor in theology 
were not known till the year 1215, and that then 
they were devised by the authority of the Lateran 
Council (i. e. the fourth) ; and that in the second 
year of Honorius III. the succeeding pontiff, the 
doctors and licentiates of law, who were then 
in the highest repute, (he means the school of law 
at Bologna,) furnished a pattern for the arrange- 
ment of all other academical degrees. j: The ele- 
venth chapter of the Constitutions of the Fourth 

* Itter, ibid, and Conringius, Diss. iv. s. 24, from Onu- 
phrius, Chron. Ecdes. Du Boullay, t. ii. p. 682. 

t Itter, ibid. It seems necessary to receive this testimony 
with some caution. Itter does not quote the words of Rigord 
himself, but trusts to the representation of Naudaeus, in his 
Orat. de Antiquit. Scholae Medicse Paris. If Rigord says 
nothing more than the sentences which are quoted in his own 
words by Conringius, Dissert, iii. s. 18, and Suppl. xlix. 
though he bears ample testimony to the existence of all the 
faculties, to the study of the trivium and quadrivium, of the 
dvil and canon law, of medicine and of theology, he makes 
no mention of degrees. 

t Ant. a Wood, Hist, et Antiq. Univ. Oxon. lib. i. p. 24. 



UNIVERSITIES. 19 

Lateran Council relates to teachers of theology ; 
but how far it bears out the above assertion, we have 
no means of ascertaining. It is manifest, however, 
that the appellation of doctor was known before this 
time, whatever might be the case with that of ba- 
chelor in theology. It seems that these academi- 
cal distinctions were regulated at that time, and 
that these regulations were part of the reform 
which Innocent lU. by his legate introduced into 
the University of Paris in the same year, 1215, as 
we have related above.* 

We have now conducted the theological faculty 
to the stage in which candidates were examined 
and approved by the existing teachers, before they 
were allowed to assume the title of doctor or mas- 
ter, and to deliver public lectures. As yet we have 
found nothing similar in the faculty of arts ; unless 
indeed it be supposed that the expressions of Pope 
Innocent about Stephen Langton prove as much 
with respect to one faculty as the other. But 
regulations on this head likewise made part of 
Innocent's reform; and it was provided that no 
one should read, that is, lecture in arts, who had 
not been an auditor six years, and passed a formal 
examination. A more curious provision is that the 

♦ Cr^vier, tom.i. p. 296; Du Boullay, t. iii. pp. 81, 82. 
The Constitutions of Innocent are noticed by Mosheim, cent, 
xiii. p. ii. chap. i. ; and Dupin, Nouv. Biblioth. siec. iii. 
oh. X. 



20 



ON THE ORIGIN OF 



aspirant must be more than twelve years of age.* 
There is a most important bull of Gregory IX, of 
the year 1231, in which, after regulating the ad- 
mission of masters of theology and the canon law, 
he ordains that, " with regard to the students of 
medicine and the artistce, the chancellor shall pro- 
mise to examine the masters in good faith, and 
admitting only the worthy, he shall keep out the 
unworthy. "f At this time the university was in a 
disturbed state. There had been disputes between 
the bishop of Paris and the chancellor of St. Ge- 
nevieve. In the year 1229, in consequence of a 
quarrel with' the citizens of Paris, in which the 
students of the university conceived themselves 
to be aggrieved, great numbers of them deserted 
the university, and many were allured to Oxford 
by the offers of Henry III. The university re- 
mained in a feeble condition for two or three years, 
when Louis IX. exerted himself for its restoration, 
especially by the renewal and confirmation of all 
the privileges conceded to it by former kings ; and 
it is probable that this bull of Pope Gregory was 
designed to assist his efforts.:|: 

From this time forth there can be no doubt that 

* Du Boullay, t. iii. pp. 81, 82. 

t ^' De physicis autem et artistis cancellarius promittet, 
bona fide examinare magistros, et non nisi dignos admittens 
repellet indignos." — Conringius, Diss. iii. s. 18 5 Du BouUay, 
t. iii. pp. 140, 141. 

I Conringius, Diss. v. s. 10. 



UNIVERSITIES. 



21 



degrees were regularly conferred in all the facul- 
ties after a solemn examination ; and altliough Fi- 
leaac could name only two doctors in theology 
created in the thirteenth century, it is manifest 
that this is to be ascribed to the want of registers, 
and not to the rarity of the degree.* Nicholas IV. 
who was pope from 1287 to 1294, granted to the 
University of Paris a most valiiable and honourable 
privilege, that doctors who were there approved 
should everywhere have the power of teaching, 
lecturing, and directing public schools, (^docendi, 
kgendi, regendi,) and should be accounted doctors 
everywhere. It may be worth while to mention, 
that it was this privilege of catholic degrees, if we 
may use the expression, which in somewhat later 
tines caused the confirmation of the popes to be 
sought whenever a new university was founded. 
It was not questioned that any sovereign might 
erect a university in his own dominions ; or if any 
difficulty were raised, it was only with regard to a 
theological faculty ; but it was the pope alone who 
could make degrees valid beyond the limits of the 
university in which they were conferred, and give 
them authority throughout Christendom.^ By the 
beginning of the fourteenth century, corruptions 

• Ibid. Diss. W. B. 25. 

t See Report of the Conimission of Enquiry into tlie Univer- 
lities of Scotland, p. 213. This ducCrine appears to have heen 
eipreuty stated in the bull of Nicholas V. by which iho 
Univeraity of Glasgow was established. 



22 ON THiB ORIGIN OF 

had crept into the ceremony of taking degrees ; 
and Pope Clement V. published an edict of the 
Cowicil of Vienne against the ostentatious and ex- 
travagant expenses of the commencing doctors.* 

When we proceed to review the history of the 
University of Bologna, we shall see that the title 
of doctor of laws was probably as old there as the 
title of doctor of theology at Paris ; and that the 
appellation had an independent origin at each 
place. But it has been argued with great appear- 
ance of truth, that the artificial system of academi- 
cal degrees, with all its gradations and distinctive 
titles, which was finally adopted in every Euro- 
pean university, was derived originally from the 
University of Paris. Not only does the superior 
antiquity of the university afford a presumption 
that this was the case ; but the term bacJielary which 
was everywhere used as the appellation of the 
lowest degree in each faculty, is said in its proper 
meaning to be exclusively French, and appears to 
have been peculiar to the feudal or military law of 

* Conringius, Diss. iv. s. 26. This is the same decree as 
that which Savigny says was issued in 1311, and which he 
mentions as directed speciaUy to the University of Bologna. 
In the original decree cited by Conringius, the expenses are 
limited to *' tria millia Turonensium argenteorum." If the 
Sol Toumois is meant, these will be equivalent to 387 ounces 
of silver ; a very large sum in that age. The sum named by 
the Italian abbreviator of Savigny is *' lire 600." This is 
less than the sixth part of the former amount. 



DNITBESITIES. 23 

France." The meaning and etymology of the term 
bachelor has occasioned much idle speculation ; but 
if it be carefuUyexamined, it appears clearly that the 
knight bachelor (chvnalitr bachelierj was the hum- 
blest species of knight, and the term was specially 
used in contradistinction to a knight banneret. The 
knight banneret had the right to unfold his banner; 
that is, he not only appeared in arms himself, but 
his possessions were so ample, or his fame as a 
leader such, that he brought followers into the 
field to fight under his banner. The knight 
bachelor furnished himself for the field, but he 
had no followers, and consequently unrolled no 
banner. Such a moderate estate as enabled a 
single knight thus to appear in arms was called a 
baecalare, and hence the term baccalarius ; but of 
the more remote etymology it is diificult or tm- 
poseible to affirm any thing. In its academical use 
the term was taken metaphorically, and applied to 
the humblest species of academical graduate. If 
the proper use of the word was peculiarly French, — 
and it appears to have been so, — the academical use 
of it must have prevailed first in the great Univer- 
sity of France, and have been borrowed thence by 
other academic bodies ; and if this be granted, it will 
be difficult to resist the inference, that the whole 
system of academic honours was of Parisian origin. 

■ Conringius, Diss. \v. s. 2i ; and Us faUoiverg, Eric Mau- 
rice, p. 27 ; snd liter, cap. ip. t. 25. 



24 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

We shall return to the subject of degrees when 
we have examined the origin and early history of 
some other universities ; and then we shall endea- 
vour to show by what process these licences to 
teach (for such they originally were) have passed 
into mere honourable distinctions. At present, we 
will proceed to explain some further particulars in 
the constitution of the University of Paris, and 
mention briefly the privileges conferred on it. 

We have seen by the bull of Gregory IX. of 
the year 1231, that the masters of medicine were 
not at that time separate from the artisUe, but 
received their licence to teach from the same 
chancellor. The faculties were originally all in- 
cluded in the nations of the school of arts : but at 
some period of the thirteenth century, in conse- 
quence of a dispute with the Dominican friars, 
who wished in fact to intrude themselves into all 
the chairs of the university,* the faculty of arts 
consented that the doctors in theology should sepa- 
rate themselves, and form a distinct body. This ex- 
ample was followed by the teachers of law and me- 
dicine ; and thus the three faculties were formed, 
which were represented and governed by their deans. 
The university was thus divided in an anomalous way 
into the four nations of the faculty of arts under 

* This spirited contest lasted from 1228 to 1259. See 
Waddington's History of the Church, pp. 391, 392 ; Meiners, 
1. 1, p. 82, from Bull III. 367. 



OSIVEBSITIEB. 25 

their procurators, and the tliree superior faculties 
under their deaps. But it must be borne in mind, 
that the doctors only constituted the higher facul- 
ties : the bachelors and Bcholars of theology, law, 
and medicine, were included in the four nations. 
It has been mentioned already that the rector 
could be chosen only from the ancient faculty 
of arts. Savigny, from whom we have taken 
these details, points out as the great distinction 
between Paris and Bologoa, and between the 
universities which were formed respectively after 
these two great models, that whilst at Bologna the 
university was tlie university of the scholars, and 
the body of the scholars possessed the supreme 
power of the university, at Paris the government 
of the university was vested entirely in the doc- 
tors and masters, and they alone constituted the 
university, so far as it was a public body. A!l 
doctors and masters had originally a right to be 
present in the general assembly of the university : 
but after the middle of the thirteenth century, 
when these degrees no longer necessarily implied 
that the person holding tliem was actually engaged 
in teaching, the lecturers or acting masters only 
(^moffistri regentes) ordinarily took a part in the 
general assembly ; the other graduates only on 
extraordinary occasions and by special invitation. 
It appears, however, that eventually all doctors 
made good their claim to be considered as regents, 
even though they were not actually i 



26 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

teaching.* The same intrusion was practised at 
Oxford; and at Cambridge, in copgregations, the 
doctors of more than two years* standing have the 
privilege of choosing whether they will vote in 
the Regent House, or the Non-regent House. 

The study of the civil law had been introduced 
at Paris in the twelfth century, apparently not very 
long after its revival at Bologna. We know from 
Giraldus Cambrensis, that he studied it at Paris 
about the year 1180. From another contempo- 
rary witness of the same age we have an account 
of the method of the lectures on the Pandects. 
Rigord in 1209 . describes the study of the civil 
law as prosecuted with as much zeal and vigour as 
those of any of the other faculties, with the excep- 
tion of theology. But in the year 1220, Pope 
Honorius III. published a decretal forbidding the 
study of the civil law at Paris ; and in that age of 
papal supremacy of course the public lectures 
were silenced. The faculty of law, however, was 
not extinguished, because the study of the ponti- 
fical or canon law survived, and was encouraged 
by ecclesiastical authority; but it lost its weight 
'and importance in the university. Some attempts 
were made to revive the study of the Roman law, 
especially under the authority of the parliament of 
Paris, in 1568 ; and in 1576 the celebrated juris- 
consult Cujacius took the degree of doctor of laws 

* See the Edinburgh Review, No. cvi. for June 1831, 
pp. 388, 389. 



imivEESiTiEs. 27 

at Paris. But the prohibition was renewed ; and 
the university was not finally relieved from it till the 
year 1679.* We might adduce more remarkable 
instances, in which the study of particular faculties 
was forbidden to particular universities ; but this 
example is sufficient to show that they were not 
necessarily places of universal learning, 

We must say a few words of the legal exemp- 
tions and peculiar privileges of the university and 
its members. Rigord speaks of a certain " liberty 
and special prerogative of defence" granted to the 
scholars of the university by Philip Augustus and 
his father Louis Vli. f There seems no further 
mention of any privilege granted by Louis ; but 
Philip Augustus, in the year 1200, granted to the 
scholars of the university an exemption from the 
secular courts. They might be arrested by the 
civil power if they committed any misdemeanour ; 
but they could be tried aud punished only by the 
ecclesiastical courts.J This exemption, as we 
shall see hereafter, was in imitation of an edict of 
the Emperor Frederic Barbarosso, published in 
115S, in favour of the University of Bologna. In 
the fifteenth centurj', however, the criminal juris- 
diction over all members of the university was 
transferred to the parliament of Paris ; apparently 

■ SavigDv. The words of the decrelal are given by Con- 
ringiuB, Dissert, iii. s. 18. 
t Conringius, Suppl. xiii. 
I Du BouUay, Hist. VtiW. Paris, torn. iii. p. 4. Savigny. 



1 
I 



30 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

ance as a school of theology, it met with no less 
fiiYOur from the popes. The members of it were not 
to be compelled to appear anywhere oiit of Paris, 
on occasion of suits that might arise among them, 
even by letters of the apostolic see. But the 
most singular privilege conferred by the court of 
Rome, was by a letter of Innocent IV. by 'which it 
was provided, that no one should promulgate a 
sentence of excommunication, suspension, or inter- 
dict, against the university or any of its members, 
without a special licence from the apostolic see ; 
and that, if promulgated, it should be null and 
void.* It seems that the whole kingdom of France 
might be under an interdict, and the university 
exempt from it. 

In the account which we have given of the 
[MTivileges and exemptions of the university, and 
of the changes which they underwent, it will be 
perceived that there was a gradual effort after the 
first ages to withdraw the university from its ec- 
clesiastical connexions, and to bring it back to 
subjection to the civil authority. Bodin, in the 
passage cited above on the authority of Conringius, 
after speaking of the papal privileges of the univer- 
sity, adds, '< But our kings and magistrates have 
often declared that they are not bound by the 
papal laws." Over the university, as a corporate 

* Conringius, Diss. v. s. 10. 



UNIVERSITIES. 31 

body, jurisdiction was exercised in the first in- 
stance by the king himself, and afler the middle 
of the fifteenth century by the parliament of 
Paris.* And at length, in the year 1573, the 
parliament solemnly adjudged, that the university 
was a secular corporation, and not ecclesiastical tf 
a decision which is worth bearing in mind in an 
inquiry into the legal condition of universities in 
modem times. 

The university, as a corporation, was always 
very poor, and never possessed any public building; 
but was obliged to hold its meetings in the houses 
of the religious orders who were willing to give 
it this accommodation.^: The teachers originally 
delivered their lectures in such rooms as they 
could hire, or otherwise obtain the use of; and 
very strange accommodation they seem sometimes 
to have procured.§ Afterwards, however, the 
several faculties had their peculiar halls or schools, 
in which their lectures were delivered. || Those 
of the faculty of arts and philosophy were in the 
Rue de la F<marre (vieus Stramineus ) ^ and appear 

♦ Savigny. + Itter, cap. v. s. 6. % Savigny. 

$ See in the Edinburgh Review, No. cvi. p. 399, an ex- 
tract from the Cardinal de Vitry, who wrote in the first half 
of the thirteenth century, and describes the state of Paris, 
and of the university in particular. Conringius alludes to 
this passage, Suppl. xlvi. but seems to have been too scan- 
dalised at it to quote it. 

11 Savigny. 



32 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

to have been very numerous, and to have been 
apportioned among the nations of the faculty.* 

The great concourse of students in the early 
universities made it difficult for them to obtain 
lodgings, and the citizens of course demanded for 
their lodgings very high prices. To remedy this 
inconvenience, recourse was had to somewhat arbi- 
trary expedients. Frederic II. when he founded 
his university at Naples, fixed a mcucimum price 
for lodgings, and enacted besides that all lodgings 
should be let according to the joint valuation of two 
citizens and two scholars.t The latter regulation 
was in force in the English universities. At Bologna, 
in like manner, four taxors were appointed to regu- 
late the price of lodgings, j: Elsewhere it was pro- 
vided, that when a scholar had once hired lodgings, 
he should not be disturbed in the possession of them 
so long as he paid his rent. But, in spite of all 
such arbitrary regulations, it is manifest that the 
more celebrated and the more frequented any uni- 
versity was, the greater would be the demand for 
lodgings, and the higher the price of them. This 
pressure upon the poor students excited charitable 

• Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. pp. 400, 401. 

t Conring. Diss. v. s. 9, gives large extracts from the em- 
peror^s letter of foundation, preserved in the Collection of his 
chancellor, Petrus de Vineis (Pietro delle Vigne), lib. iii. 
epist. 2. 

X Savigny. 



UNIYEKSITIES. 33^ 

beDefactors to relieve it in a more effectual manner. 
The religious orders first established, in several 
university towns, hostels (hospitia) for those of 
their members who resorted thither either as teach- 
ers or learners. The example was followed by in- 
dividuals ; and houses were provided, in which poor 
scholars enjoyed the benefit of free lodgings. Free 
board was soon added ; and in many cases small 
stipends or bursaries to defray the necessary ex- 
penses of the scholars. For the sake of discipline, 
these foundations were placed under the superin- 
tendence of one or more graduates; and these 
masters assisted and instructed their pupils; but 
only in subservience to tfte public lectures and' 
exercises of the university.* Such establishments 
were called inns, hostels, halls, or colleges. The lat- 
ter name was generally restricted to foundations, 
where there was an endowment for the support of 
several graduates. 

As Paris was the most ancient university, so it 
was the university in which collegiate establish- 
ments were first founded. According to Mr. Hal- 
lam, Crivier enumerates fifteen colleges founded 

* This general account of the origin of colleges, as well -as 
the greater part of the following account of the colleges of 
the University of Paris, is taken from the very able and 
learned article in the Edinburgh Review, to which reference 
has been already made. 

D 



34 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

in the University of Paris during the thirteenth 
century, besides one or two of a still earlier date. 
It is doubtful how far the latter part of this account 
can be depended upon* Savigny esteems the fa- 
mous college of the Sorbonne to have been the 
most ancient in Paris ; and this was founded by 
Robert de Sorbonne only in the year 1250. Ap- 
parently Crevier included in his list such hospitia of 
the religious orders as have been mentioned above. 
The great college of Navarre, which is said some- 
times to have contained seven hundred pupils, was 
founded by Johanna Queen of Philip the Fair, in 
ld04.f The colleges of Harcourt and Boissy 
were of the same century. The Collegium Tri' 
linguey for the study of Latin, Greek, and He- 
brew, was founded by Francis I. early in the six- 
teenth century.j: 

The great colleges of Paris stood on a footing 
very different from the colleges of the English 
Universities. They soon became appropriated to 
particular faculties, or to particular departments of 
a faculty. Sometimes, but rarely, they included 
more than one faculty. Thus the theological fa- 

* The College of Good Boys of St. Honor^ was founded for 
twelve poor scholars and an overseer in 1208. Meiners, t. i. 
p. 109, from Du Boullay, iii. 45, 46. 

■j- Meiners, t. i. p. 122. 

+ Du Boullay. 



UNIVERSITIES. 35 

culty was collected at an early period in the college 
of the Sorbonne; and all its lectures and public 
disputations took place there, with the exception 
of two courses delivered in the college of Navarre. 
Regent masters were nominated by the faculties as 
lecturers in the colleges. These lecturers remained 
subject to their several faculties, and were liable to 
be controlled or removed by them. Consequently, 
attendance on their courses was considered as 
equivalent to attendance on the public courses de- 
livered in the schools of the university. The col- 
leges speedily began to admit within their walls 
scholars who were not supported by their founda- 
tions; and the college lectures were ultimately 
thrown open to the members of other colleges, and 
to those scholars of the university who belonged to 
no college at all. This took place in the course of 
the fifteenth century. The lectures in the public 
schools were thus almost entirely superseded, at 
least in the faculties of theology and arts ; and the 
colleges became the instruments of the public in- 
struction of the university. During the latter half 
of the fifteenth century, the great colleges of the 
faculty of arts, or, as they were called, the colleges 
"de plein exercice," amounted to eighteen; al- 
though by the middle of the seventeenth century 
they had fallen to ten. There were about eighty 
smaller colleges, of which more than half still sur- 



38 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

about the year 1075, began to lecture on law, but 
without attracting much notice.* 

Imerius had a very different success. He not 
only may be said to have created the University of 
Bologna, but he was the author of a great revo- 
lution in the jurisprudence of Europe. Savigny 
calls him a Bolognese. He is more commonly sup- 
posed to have been a German. His name indi- 
cates at least a German origin.f According to 
Conringius, he was engaged in teaching the liberal 
arts at Ravenna ; and was invited thence to Bo- 
logna for the same purpose, apparently by the au- 
thority of the city. J Whilst he was lecturing in 
arts in the Bolognese school, copies of some of the 
books of the code of Justinian, which were begin- 
ning to excite attention, and to be circulated 
through Italy, reached Bologna. Imerius applied 
himself diligently to the study of them. There is 
a story, of better authority than such stories usu- 
ally are, inasmuch as it comes from the celebrated 
jurisconsult Azzo, that his researches into the 
Roman law were first occasioned by a dispute 
about the meaning of the word as in the Vulgate. 

* Savigny, torn. vi. cap. 26 ; chiefly on the authority of 
Odofredus. 

*f* Irnerio is the Italian form of it ; but German writers 
call him Guamerius, Warnerius, and Wernerius: so that 
we may conjecture Werner to have been the true name^ 
His glosses are signed sometimes G. sometimes Y. ; that is, 
Guemerius, or Ymerius. X I^iss* i. s. 45« 



UNIVERSITIES. 39 

There is another tradition, the authority for which 
is the Abbot of Usperga, a chronicler of the age of 
Frederic II., that is, about a century after Irnerius, 
according to which his labours upon the monuments 
of the civil law were in the first instance rather 
grammatical and critical than legal. This is highly 
probable, from the situation in which he was then 
placed. He is said to have been requested by the 
Countess Matilda to arrange and restore, and cor- 
rect the text of the Institutes, the Pandects, (that 
is, of the Digests, as certain portions of them were 
called,) the Codex, and the Authentica. The lady 
who directed his attention to this important object 
was Matilda Countess of Spoleto and Tuscany, the 
last of the ancient race of sovereign princes of 
Tuscany, who, in the pontificate of Gregory VII. 
consented to hold her dominions as a fief of the 
Holy See. Irnerius, after thus studying thoroughly 
the monuments of the code of Justinian, undertook 
to expound it in the public schools. Conringius 
distinctly asserts that this novel course of lectures 
was undertaken with the sanction of the Republic 
of Bologna, and that Irnerius was rewarded for his 
labours at the public expense.^ He lectured with 
so much zeal and energy, that he collected large 
numbers of hearers, and gave an effectual impulse 
to the study of the Roman law throughout Italy 

* '' Jus Romanum Bononiaa in Italia doceri publico coepit, 
sumpHbus et ottra reipublica t//tu«, per Imerium.'* Diss. i. 
s. 45. 



40 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

and Europe. His own reputation he raised to a 
great height. The precise date of the commence- 
ment of his lectures cannot be ascertained, nor are 
the events of the latter part of his life knOwn. His 
name is mentioned in the records of public business 
and judicial proceedings between the years 1113 
and, 1118. From 1116 to 1118 he was in the ser- 
vice of the Emperor Henry V. and in this last 
year was employed by him at Rome in affairs of 
the highest importance. Savigny argues speci- 
ously enough, that it is not likely that he would be 
employed in State affairs, when he was known only 
as a grammarian and a Master of the Trivium and 
Quadrivium. His introduction to political life 
must have been his reputation as a teacher of law ; 
^nd accordingly the origin of the Bolognese school 
must be placed at the end of the eleventh century, 
or the very beginning of the twelfth. After 1118 
Imerius quitted his school to attach himself to the 
Imperial Court; and Savigny thinks it doubtful 
whether he ever returned to Bologna. He treats as 
a fabrication of no authority the account in the chro- 
nology of Otto Muraena, that the famous " Four 
Doctors" of the age of Frederic 1. or Barbarossa, 
namely Bulgarus, Martin Gosia, Hugo, and Jacopo 
della Porta Ravennate, were pupils of Irnerius; 
and that when his scholars came to him on his 
death-bed, and requested him to name his succes- 
sor in the school, he replied by a distich, in which 



UNIVERSITIES. 41 

he characterized these pre-eminent disciples.* 
When, however, we consider the prevalence of the 
tradition that the School of Law at Bologna was 
founded, and Irnerius appointed to teach hy the 
authority of the Emperor Lothaire II. or the Saxon, 
in 1125, or soon after; even though the tradition 
is demonstrated to be false as to the first origin of 
the school, we may think it probable that Irnerius> 
after the death of his patron Henry V. and the 
accession of Lothaire, returned to his academical 
employment at Bologna. He could hardly, it 
would seem, have established his school so firmly, 
if his labours had been confined to the brief period 
before he entered the service of the imperial court. 
Sigonius, in his history of Bologna, fixes the time 
of his death in the year 1150. Upon what autho- 
rity he makes this assertion is not clear ; but if it 
be true, ^* the Four Doctors " might have been his 
auditors during many years. 

The Roman law had never been utterly forgotten 
or disused in the provinces of the vast empire which 
was formerly subject to it. The countries of the 
South of France, many parts of Spain, and a great por- 
tion of the inhabitants of Lombardy, professed to be 
governed by it. But the only source from which a 
knowledge of it was derived was exceedingly scanty. 

* Savigny, torn. iv. cap. 27. Conring. Diss. iii. s. 19. In 
his Suppl. U. 8. 3. he has given Otto Mursena's story from 
the Annals of Baronius, lib. xii. an. 1558. 



42 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

It was nothing more than the Breviary of Alaric, 
which was extracted from the Theodosian code by 
the order of the king of the Visigoths about the 
year 500 ; and the Theodosian code itself contained 
httle beyond the more recent laws promulgated 
after the establishment of Christianity. The code of 
Justinian, in which the whole mass of Roman ju- 
risprudence was reduced to a regular form, was 
long posterior to the separation of the Eastern and 
Western £mpires,.and was never acknowledged to 
have any authority in the provinces of the West. 
If it was remembered and recognized at all in Italy, 
it was only in the southern part of the peninsula, 
which remained longest connected with the Greek 
Empire. It was not, however, absolutely unknown to 
learned men. Some ecclesiastical writers refer to 
it; for example, Hincmar, the archbishop of Rheims 
in the ninth century : and they bear testimony to 
the respect with which it was regarded by the Ro- 
man church.* 

At' the close of the eleventh and beginning of 
the twelfth centuries, the growing liberty, civiliza- 
tion and wealth of the Italian cities made them feel 
the want of a more exact and comprehensive and 
reasonable system of law, than could be extracted 
either from the meagre relics of Roman jurispru- 
dence which they still possessed, or from the customs 
which the Lombards and other northern races had 

• Hallam. 



TJNIVERSITIES. 43 

brought with them into Italy, and which had been 
modified by the introduction of feudal relations. 
Accordingly, when the more copious fountains of 
legal science were opened by Irnerius, it was felt 
that an actual and pressing want of society was 
suddenly relieved. The study of law not only at- 
tracted the attention of individuals, but became an 
object of solicitude to communities ; so that muU 
titudes of scholars from every part of Italy resorted 
to Bologna. The fame of the new study soon spread 
beyond the Alps, and foreigners of every nation, 
and especially from Germany, flocked to the uni- 
versity ; so that in the time of Azzo (about 1220), 
ten thousand students were assembled in its halls.* 
In the middle of the fourteenth century the number 
was about thirteen thousand, f 

One of the most important labours of Irnerius and 
his successors was to collect the scattered manu- 
scripts of the monuments of the civil law, which 
were all more or less imperfect, to piece them to- 
gether so as to restore their integrity, and by a 
careful collation to correct the numerous corrup- 
tions of the text. It was thus as editors that they 
were even more useful than in their function as 
interpreters and commentators. The earlier school 
of Bologna was pre-eminent for its critical diligence 
in ascertaining the text. Journeys to Pisa were 

* Conring. Diss. iii. s. 19. 

-|- Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvi. p. 325. 



44 ON THB ORI6IK OF 

frequently undertaken to consult the celebrated 
manuscript of the Pandects, which is commonly said 
to have been brought to that city from Amalfi in 
1185, but which Savigny asserts to have existed 
there long before. In later days, when jurisconsults 
were less zealous, Bartolus made one such journey, 
which he has taken care to commemorate four 
times.* 

It is uncertain how early the title of Doctor was 
given to the teachers of the Bolognese School. 
Some writers, as we have seen, suppose that it was 
borrowed from the theological school of Paris. 
Others reverse the transmission. It is likely enough, 
as was said before, that it was given independently 
at each place. The earliest teachers were called 
lord, master, judge (JDcmmuSy Magistery Judex) ; 
and these titles seem to have been in common use 
before that of doctor.f It is important to remark 
that Dominus was a customary appellation, because 
a want of attention to this point has led even Con- 
ringius to misinterpret the famous edict issued by 
Frederic Barbarossa at Roncaglia, which we shall 
mention presently. 

Not very long after the revival of the civil law, 
another subject of study, of much less intrinsic 

* Savigny in the 22nd chapter of his third volume has g^ven 
a very complete account of the state of the text of the Pandecta 
and other monuments of the Justinian code in the twelfth 
century, and of the labour which the school of Bologna be- 
stowed upon them. 

•f Gonring. Diss. ill. s. 19 ; Suppl. 11. s. 3. Savigny. 



UNIVERSITIES. 45 

worth, was brought into public notice at Bologna. 
In the early ages of the church the public letters of 
bishops were known by the name of Decretals 
(EpisiokB DecretalesJ. As the see of Rome in- 
creased in power, an especial regard was paid to 
the decretals of the Bishop of Rome; and in 
A.D. 494, a synod held at Rome under Pope Ge- 
lasius declared the decretals of the apostolic see to 
be of the same authority as the canons of councils. 
When the power of the popes became more and 
more exorbitant after the time of Charlemagne, 
they insisted on the supremacy of their decretals. 
Collections of these ecclesiastical statutes were 
made, but they were not sanctioned by authority. 
At length, in 1151, Gratian, a monk of St. Felix in 
Bologna, published his collection, which was called 
simply the Decretum, This compilation was im- 
mediately received with great favour, and was made 
the subject of public lectures in the schools of Bo- 
logna ; if we may trust Conringius, even in the pon- 
tificate of Eugenius III. who died in 1153;^ and 
many scholars were attracted to the study of it. 
Thus the foundations of the pontifical or canon law 
were laid. The decrees of succeeding pontiffs made 
a goodly superstructure. The popes of course re- 
garded the study of this new branch of jurispru- 

* Conring. Diss. iii. s. 19. He cites the author of the Life 
of Gratiaxu If Conringius is right in naming Pope £ugenius, 
Panvinius was wrong in referring the publication of Gratian's 
Decretum to 1154. See Itter, cap. iv. s. 21. Mr. Hallam 
says that it was published about the year 1140. 



46 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

dence with peculiar favour. The civil law was too 
popular in Italy even for papal power to interfere 
with. But in other countries they discouraged the 
study of the civil law, and sought to substitute for 
it the exclusive study of the canon law. This was 
the cause of the prohibition of the study of the 
civil law in the University of Paris, which we have 
already noticed ; a prohibition which Innocent IV. 
endeavoured to extend to the whole of France. 
England, Scotland, and Hungary.* According to 
Savigny, there were doctors of the canon law at 
Bologna about the end of the twelfth century. 
When degrees came to be regularly conferred, the 
degree of doctor was taken either in the civil or 
canon law separately, or jointly in both.t 

Although the University of Bologna had its 
origin, as was observed before, in a school of arts 
and philosophy, little or nothing is known of this 
part of it during the twelfth century. It appears 
to have been obscured by the splendour of the 
rising school of law. But about the year 1220, we 
find that the Emperor Frederic II. transmitted to 
the philosophical school of Bologna certain works 

♦ Savigny. 

-f* There is a sufficiently full account of the compilation of 
Gratlan, and of the origin of the pontifical law, and of the 
authoritative addition? which it received from successive 
popes, in Mr. Waddington's History of the Church, note A. 
to chap. xzi. pp. 467 — 469. Mr. W. names as his chief au- 
thority, Giannone, Stor. di Nap. lib. xix. cap. v. s. 1. See 
also Mr. Hallam's Middle Ages, ch. vii. (vol. ii. p. 286.) 



UNIVERSITIES. 47 

of Aristotle and other philosophers, which he had 
caused to be translated into Latin from the original 
Greek or from Arabic versions. The very interest- 
ing letter of the emperor, with which he accompa- 
nied his gift, is preserved in the collection of his 
chancellor, Pietro delle Vigne ; and the greater part 
of it is quoted by Conringius.* This gift gave new 
life to the study of philosophy. About this period 
translations of Greek philosophical and mathematical 
works, made, indeed, not from the originals, but 
from Arabic translations, became numerous, and 
opened new sources of knowledge to the scholars 
of the West 

The origin of the Medical School of Bologna is 
not marked; but in the thirteenth century there 
were several celebrated professors of medicine, who 
attracted a large concourse of auditors. They 
were in possession of some few books of Hippo- 
crates and Galen, and of several translations of the 
works of Arabic physicians.t We are probably not 
wrong in the conjecture that the medical school of 
Bologna was the offspring of Salerno, and that it 
was founded in the reign of Frederic II., when his 
possession of the kingdom of Naples at the same 
time with the empire of Germany and the titular 
sovereignty of Lombardy, made the connexion be- 
tween the north and south of Italy much more in- 
timate than it had been before. 

* Pet. De Vineis, lib. iii. ep. 69 ; Gonring. Diss. iii. s. 20. 
t Gonring. Diss. iiL s. 21. 



48 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

Bologna had been one of tlie most celebrated 
seats of learning in Europe for nearly two hundred 
and fifly years, before theology constituted a re- 
gular part of its studies. There were not wanting 
occasionally lecturers in theology; for example, 
Alexander III., before his elevation to the pope- 
dom, had lectured on theology at Bologna : but the 
teachers of this science undertook their labours as 
a voluntary enterprise, without authority or sanc- 
tion. At length, in the year 1362, Pope Innocent 
YI. granted to the university, as a mark of special 
favour, permission to teach theology, and erected 
a faculty of theology on the model of that of 
Paris.* 

That we may not entirely lose sight of chrono- 
logical arrangement in our account of this cele- 
brated university, before we proceed to describe 
more particularly its internal constitution, we will 
notice the singular privileges conferred upon its 
scholars by the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, at 
the Diet of Roncaglia, in November 1158. This 
was a Diet of the Kingdom of Lombardy, held to 
settle the disputes between Frederic and the Lom- 
bard cities, and to reconcile, if possible, the claims 
of the emperor to the sovereignty, and of the cities 
to municipal self-government. But amongst graver 
political matters, an edict was issued, which, in the 
first place, provided for the safe conduct and pro- 

* Conring. Diss. iii. s. 21. Savigny. 



UNIYBRSITIES. 49 

tection of foreign scholars and professors, travelling 
or residing in the emperor's dominions for the sake of 
study ; and in particular, that no molestation should 
be offered to them, nor any exaction practised 
upon them, under pretence of any public offence 
or debt of the province or city to which they be- 
longed ; and which, in the second place, granted to 
all scholars, in case any suit was brought against 
them, the option of having it determined either by 
the master under whom they studied, or by the 
bishop of the place.* It is remarkable that no 
express mention is made of Bologna in this docu- 
ment ; but that it was designed for the benefit of 
scholars resorting thither is apparent, because it 
was by far the most frequented place of study in 
the emperor's dominions, and probably the only one 
at that time which was visited by foreign students. 
Professors of law are specially mentioned; and 
Bologna was^then the only school of law; and the 

* Authent. " Habita, &c. :" Tit. Ne filius pro patre (iv. 
13). The whole edict is given by Conringius, Suppl. hex. 
and he has commented upon it in his Fifth Dissertation, 
88. 4-8, and the annexed Supplements. Savigny*8 explana- 
tion of it is short and clear. The words in which the import- 
ant privilege is granted are these : ^^ Si litem eis quispiam 
super aliquo negotio movere voluerit, hujus rei optione data 
Scholaribus, eos coram Domino vel Magistro $uo vel ipsius 
civitatis Episcopo, quibus banc jurisdictionem dedimus, con- 
veniat. Qui vero ad alium judicem eos trahere tentaverit, 
etiamsi causa justissima fuerit, a tali conamine cadat>" 

£ 



50 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

permission to a scholar to bring his cause before 
" his lord or master/' seems to assume that his 
lord or master was a legal character. Another 
reason for applying the edict peculiarly to Bologna, 
is this ; that the four famous doctors already men- 
tioned, who were the chief professors of the uni- 
versity, were then in close attendance upon the 
emperor. Not only were they his assessors in 
hearing complaints and determining suits ;* but 
they were invited by the emperor to adjudge what 
rights ought to be restored to his crown, which 
had been usurped by the cities without a special 
royal grant : and when they refused to take upon 
themselves alone so invidious a task, twenty -eight 
judges were named to act with them on behalf of 
the cities, the four doctors acting more particularly 
on behalf of the emperor.f It can scarcely be 
doubted, therefore, that the edict was drawn up by 
them, and with a special reference to their own 
university, although with far-sighted wisdom they 
made the language of it general. We may ob- 
serve, by the way, that the employment of the four 
doctors in such a business as that we have men- 
tioned is a splendid testimony to the reputation and 
authority of the university. The privilege granted 
to the scholars of choosing their judge seems 

* Radevicus, lib. ii. cap. 5. in Conring. Suppl. li. s. 3. 
-|- Savigny, torn. iv. c. 28. He cites Otto Munena, an. 
1158. Muratori, t. vi. p. 1015 et seq. 



UNIVERSITIES. 51 

Strange to us; but in that age and country it 
would not appear a violation of common usage. 
In consequence of the intermixture of different 
races in Lombardy, each of which had its own na- 
tional laws, it had been the ancient custom for 
every one to declare according to what law he 
chose to live and be judged, whether the Roman 
law, the Lombard, or the Frank or Salic law. We 
may easily suppose that the declaration was not 
made till the individual had occasion to appear be- 
fore some tribunal. Granting therefore to the scho- 
lar the option of taking for his judge his master or 
the bishop, was in fact giving him his choice of being 
tried by the civil or the ecclesiastical law ; a privilege 
not very different from the ancient custom of the 
country. It appears that the imperial edict was at 
first interpreted by the professors as giving them 
the right of criminal as well as of civil jurisdiction ; 
but as they found themselves unable to exercise 
effectively a criminal jurisdiction, they resigned 
the right to the city before the end of the twelfth 
century, and contented themselves with the power 
of determining civil suits.* This edict of Barba- 
rossa, which at the same time granted to the 
scholars an exemption from the ordinary civic 
tribunals, and conferred an important power upon 
the professors, was the earliest example of ex- 
emption or privilege granted to a university. It 

• Savigny, torn. iii. 



52 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

was made a precedent for other universities, and 
may be regarded as the source of all their exclu- 
sive jurisdictions. 

We have before observed that Savigny lays 
down as the great distinction between the univer- 
sities of Paris and Bologna, that at Paris the pro- 
fessors or lecturers only constituted the univer- 
sity, considered as a privileged body, and that the 
students were subject to them ; on the contrary, 
at Bologna the scholars constituted the university, 
and had the power of electing academical officers, 
whom the professors were bound to obey. The 
scholars of law were divided into two bodies, or 
universities^ as they were called — according to the 
old meaning of the word — the Citramontanes and 
the Ultramontanes, that is, Italians and foreigners. 
These were subdivided into nations ; the former 
into seventeen, the latter into eighteen. Each 
nation had an officer called its counsellor ; except 
that the Germans had two procurators instead. 
At the head of the two universities of law was the 
rector, who was the chief dignitary of the whole 
academy of Bologna. The earliest mention of a 
rector is at the very end of the twelfth century. 
At first only one was elected ; then two, one for 
each university; and finally only one. He was 
elected annually by the preceding rector, by the 
counsellors of the nations, and by electors nomi- 
nated from the whole university. He was taken 



UNIVERSITIES. 53 

from each nation in turn, according to a regular 
cycle. 

The professors and scholars of arts and medi- 
cine endeavoured at an early period to constitute 
themselves into a particular university, and to 
choose a rector of their own. But the attempt 
was resisted by the lawyers, and prohibited by the 
city ; and they were compelled to rank them- 
selves with the scholars of law. But not many 
years after they renewed their efforts; and their 
right was formally acknowledged by the city in 
1316. 

In 1362, Innocent VI. established the Faculty or 
University of Theologians, on the model of the 
theological faculty of Paris ; that is, it consisted 
of the doctors only, and the scholars were con- 
sidered as belonging to the artists. The chancel- 
lor of the University of Theologians was the bishop 
of Bologna. At an earlier period, Honorius III. 
who was pope from 1216 to 1227, when he regu- 
lated the promotions or collation of degrees in the 
school of law, had made the superintendence and 
assent of the archdeacon o^ Bologna necessary. 
Savigny seems to consider this as a personal 
authority, vested in the archdeacon for the time. 
However, it was retained by his successors ; and 
in time they assumed the title of chancellors, and 
exercised a supervision over all the faculties ex- 
cept the theologians. 



54 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

The precise time when degrees were first con- 
ferred at Bologna cannot be ascertained. Of 
course, by degrees we do not now mean appella- 
tions bestowed by common consent or arbitrarily 
assumed, such as those of master, judge, or doctor, 
borne by the first teachers of the school ; but titles 
' of honour, carrying with them certain privileges, 
conferred by authority, and after examination. 
Savigny conjectures, with great probability, that 
it was in consequence of the jurisdiction conferred 
by Frederic I. upon the masters or teachers, that 
it was considered necessary to prohibit the volun- 
tary assumption of that office, and to provide a form 
of admission. The actual doctors conferred the 
title and dignity of doctor by co-optation ; that is, 
they received the candidate into their body by 
common consent. By this admission he obtained 
the right of lecturing at Bologna, which by a papal 
grant, as at Paris, was extended into a right of 
lecturing anywhere with the name and authority 
of doctor ; the right of jurisdiction over the 
scholars; and a vote in the admission of future 
doctors. When degrees became so common as to 
be merely titles of honour, so that doctors did 
not necessarily teach, the right of jurisdiction 
ever the scholars was confined to those who 
actually lectured (legentes), according to the ob- 
vious meaning of Frederic's edict. The right of 
voting in promotions was extended to all who had 



UNIVERSITIES. 55 

at any time taught in the schools.* The first 
doctors, of course, were doctors of the civil law. 
There were doctors of the canon law, as we have 
mentioned, about the end of the twelfth century. 
In the thirteenth century we find doctors of gram- 
mar, of philosophy, and of medicine : Savigny 
mentions even doctors of notariate, if we may coin 
a word to express the art or science of a notary. 
The title of doctor was by this time considered as 
more honourable than that of master, although 
originally no distinction was made between them ; 
and the appellation of master was retained by those 
lecturers who were not yet promoted to the doc- 
torate. That there were such lecturers we shall 
see presently. 

We have explained that there were four univer- 
sities: two of the scholars of law, Italian and 
foreign ; one of the artists and scholars of medi- 
cine united, in which were comprehended also the 
scholars of theology; and one of the doctors of 
theology. But there were also formed in course 
of time five colleges of doctors, which (with 
the exception of the Theological College) were 
established upon quite a different principle. The 
Theological College may have differed only in 

* The legentes and non-legentes of Bologna correspond to 
the regentes and non-regentes of Paris and Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, except that the latter terms were applied equally to 
doctors and masters, the former only to doctors. 



56 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

the number of its members from the University of 
Theology ; but there were two colleges of law, one 
of doctors of the civil law, the other of doctors 
of the canon law; and two separate colleges of 
the doctors of philosophy and medicine. These 
colleges seem to have been corporations^ in which 
a limited number of doctors of the several facul- 
ties were united, and monopolized the power 
of promotion or admission to degrees, to the ex- 
clusion of the other doctors, who, according to 
the earlier constitution of the universit}^, had an 
equal right to exercise it. They were confirmed, 
however, by the statutes of the year 1397. The 
first origin of the legal colleges runs back to the 
twelfth century: probably they were then open 
to all doctors. The legal colleges were each 
under a prior ; how the others were governed, 
Savigny does not state. By these colleges, or 
faculties, the candidates for degrees were exa- 
mined. They had a building for their common 
use, in which they met, near the cathedral; be- 
cause the public examinations were held in the 
cathedral, and degrees solemnly conferred there. 
Savigny warns his readers, that these colleges of 
civil and canon law are not to be confounded 
with' the College of Doctors^ Advocates^ and Jvdgesy 
which was an institution of the city of Bologna for 
civic purposes. It may not be superfluous to warn 
the English reader not to confound these colleges, 



UNIVERSITIES. 57 

which were merely corporate faculties, with the 
English notion of the word college. There were 
some colleges, in our sense of the word, which were 
restricted to the relief of really indigent scholars ; 
but these foundations never had any weight or 
influence in any Italian university. 

To return to the collation of degrees : it is pro- 
bable, for the reason assigned by Savigny, that 
they were first conferred by authority soon after 
1 158. In the early part of the succeeding century, 
in consequence of the frequent promotions of un- 
worthy persons, Honorius III. interposed his au- 
thority, and placed the promotions under the super- 
intendence of the archdeacon of Bologna, who 
thus became the chancellor of the university. But 
corruptions of a worse sort were behind. It is 
necessary to observe first, that originally scholars 
were forbidden to marry into the families of Bo- 
lognese citizens without the licence of the rector. 
Exemptions from this prohibition were granted, 
which were at last extended to all the descendants 
of all doctors. By the terms of this exemption, it 
is manifest that the doctors of the university had 
become closely connected with the families of the 
citizens. This connexion prepared the way for 
the gradual encroachments of municipal selfishness; 
and at last the principal chairs in the university 
were granted only to Bolognese citizens. But the 
actual doctors profited by the example, and went a 



58 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

Step further, and took an oath not to grant degrees 
to any but members of their own families. This 
outrageous monopoly began to produce its natural 
effects in the ruin of the university ; and commo- 
tions and struggles ensued between the years 1295 
and 1304, which ended in compelling the doctors 
to admit all Bolognese equally to degrees : but the 
rank of doctor, at least in the two legal colleges, or 
faculties, was still confined to citizens of Bologna. 

There were two examinations to be undergone, 
or rather two disputations to be maintained, before 
a candidate could be admitted to the dignity of 
doctor of law. The first was a private examination 
before the college or faculty of doctors. There was 
a whimsical regulation, that if any doctor in the 
examination or disputation did not treat the novice 
lovingly^ he was punished by suspension from his 
functions for a year. There seems reason to ap- 
prehend, that, before such an enactment would be 
made, the ordeal must have been a very severe one. 
After this first examination, the aspirant was called 
a licentiate ; that is, he had received a licence to 
submit himself to the public examination. The 
second, or public examination, took place in the 
cathedral, as we have noticed ; and here the pecu- 
liarity of the constitution of the Bolognese school 
manifests itself. On this occasion it was not the 
doctors but the scholars who disputed against the 
candidate. It may reasonably be conjectured, that 



UNIVERSITIES. 59 

in the most ancient period of the university, this 
public examination by the scholars was the only 
one ; and that the previous examination in private 
by the doctors, by which the latter was gradually 
reduced to a mere form, was a contrivance to 
remedy the preposterous distribution of authority 
in the ancient school. Frequently the public ex- 
amination followed the private one after a very 
short interval ; but sometimes a considerable inter- 
val was suffered to elapse between them, and thus 
the title of licentiate became a species of degree. 

At one time, the commencing doctors took an 
oath to the magistrates of the city, that they would 
not lecture out of Bologna ; but this oath was 
abolished on the petition of the scholars in 1312. 

Savigny tells us, that professors who migrated to 
other cities with their scholars, were subject to 
confiscation and very heavy fines ; but how these 
were exacted in such a case does not appear. 

All doctors had the power of lecturing in right 
of their degree. Licentiates could not lecture 
without permission from the rector : but not only 
licentiates, but simple scholars, were allowed to 
lecture. If they had studied diligently five or six 
years, they obtained a licence from the rector, upon 
payment of a fee proportioned to the magnitude of 
the division of law upon which they proposed to 
lecture. The scholar who had lectured upon an 
entire title or treatise, or who had delivered a 



60 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

formal interpretation upon a point of law, took the 
name of bachelor, and was considered to have 
earned this first degree. 

One remarkable and important character of the 
school of Bologna was, that, at a comparatively 
early period, its professors or lecturers received 
public salaries. Not to insist upon the position of 
Conringius, that Irnerius began to lecture upon 
law at the expense of the city ; in 1279 we find the 
scholars, instead of paying their fees individually, 
contracting with a professor to lecture to them upon 
a certain subject for a certain fixed sum. The 
next year they petitioned the city to pay a pro- 
fessor named by them a certain sum for lecturing 
on the Decretum ; and their petition was granted. 
In 1269, two chairs were established with a fixed 
salary ; one on the civil law, the other on the canon 
law : but the choice of the lecturers remained with 
the scholars ; and they elected annually, sometimes 
re-electing the same person, sometimes choosing 
a new lecturer. A hundred years afterwards the 
salaried chairs were much increased in number; 
so that, in 1384, there were nineteen salaried lec- 
turers in law, and twenty in arts. The professor of 
civil law, who had the highest salary, received three 
hundred florins. By this time the professors began 
to consider themselves as public functionaries, and 
election by the scholars became more rare. In 
1420, there were twenty-one lecturers in law, and 



UNIVERSITIES. 61 

scarcely one is said to have been elected. Nor 
were the salaried professors always doctors : on 
the contrary, six salaried chairs were established, 
which were held by lecturing scholars. The date 
of this foundation is not known. It existed in 
1388 ; and Savigny supposes it to have originated 
about the middle of the fourteenth century. These 
lecturers were elected annually by seventy-six elec- 
tors. Doctors, licentiates, and natives of Bologna, 
were ineligible ; an exclusion, which was evidently 
a re-action against the monopoly of the colleges ; 
and the chairs were divided equally between the 
Citramontane and the Ultramontane scholars. Af- 
terwards, on account of the tumults attending the 
elections, it became customary for the two univer- 
sities to present twelve candidates, from whom 
were chosen by lot four lecturers on the civil law, 
and two on the dectetals. According to Conrin- 
gius, in the year 1 664, there were at Bologna one 
hundred and twenty-six professors, of whom forty- 
nine were professors of law; and the senate of 
Bologna was said to expend annually in their sala- 
ries nearly forty thousand crowns.* The professors 
who had no public salary, received fees from their 
pupils ; and in the flourishing times of the imiver- 
sity many acquired great wealth. 

Anciently, the professors held their schools in 
their own houses ; but, in the fourteenth century, 

* Conring. Diss. iii. s. 21. 



62 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

public schools were founded, in which the doctors 
had a right of lecturing each twice a week ; the 
bachelors in the afternoon, if they were not occu- 
pied by a doctor. 

We will conclude our account with a few words 
on the jurisdiction of the university. The rector 
had supreme authority over all the members of it, 
except the German nation, which was subject only 
to its own procurators. The counsellors of the na- 
tions constituted a council which assisted the rector. 
The civil jurisdiction of the rector was not ques- 
tioned when both parties in a suit belonged to the 
university, or if a citizen voluntarily brought before 
him a suit against a scholar ; but if a suit against 
a scholar was brought before the magistrates of the 
city, and the rector claimed to hear it, there gene- 
rally ensued a great contest between the university 
and the city, in spite of the edict of Roncaglia. 
Soon after the rectorate was first instituted, the 
city endeavoured to abolish the office^ or to render 
it dependent upon the civic power. In 1214 espe- 
cially, great tumults were occasioned by these 
efforts. But the university maintained its privileges ; 
and they were at length fully established by the 
papal power. The criminal jurisdiction of the rec- 
tor in general extended only to matters of acade- 
mical discipline. He had the power of punishing 
both professors and scholars by fine and expulsion. 
Sometimes, in graver matters, a mixed jurisdiction 



UNIVERSITIES. 63 

was exercised by the rector and the magistrates of 
the city. But in 1544, the pope confirmed the 
criminal jurisdiction of the rector, when both the 
offending and the injured party belonged to the 
university, and the offence was not capital. 

The university had statutes at an early period, 
since they were confirmed by the pope Innocent 
IV. in 1253. They were revised and corrected 
every twenty years by eight scholars appointed for 
the purpose, and called Statutariu They were 
finally confirmed in 1544 by the pope, who had 
then become the sovereign of the city, and were 
made binding on the whole community.* 

One of the most singular points in the history of 
the University of Bologna is the admission of the 
female sex to its honours and offices. There is 
mention in early times of learned women on whom 
degrees were conferred. It is said that Novella 
d' Andrea read lectures on jurisprudence, but took 
the precaution of drawing a curtain between herself 
and her auditors. Mrs. Piozzi mentions la Dotte- 
ressa Laura Bassi, who taught mathematics and 
natural philosophy ; and Lady Morgan has intro- 
duced us to Signora Clotilda Tambroni, a learned 
professor of Greek. But the boldest inroad into 

* The whole of this account of the internal constitution of 
the University of Bologna is extracted from Savigny, torn, 
iii. although with a very great variation of arrangement. 



64 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

the scientific province of the ruder sex was made 
by Madonna Manzolina, who lectured on anatomy. 
We shall devote a little time and attention to the 
University of Salerno. This we will do, partly on 
account of its antiquity ; although it does not appear 
to have been taken as a model, or to have deter- 
mined the form of more recent universities, as 
Paris and Bologna did ; but chiefly, because it was 
the first and most famous Medical University. As 
Paris was the great school of theology, and Bo- 
logna of law, so, from the twelfth to the fourteenth 
century, was Salerno the school of medicine. In 
the neighbourhood of Salerno was the monastery of 
Monte Cassino. About the middle of the eleventh 
century, or a little later, Constantino, a native of 
Africa, who professed to have spent nine-and- thirty 
years in travelling throughout Asia, for the sake of 
acquiring learning in the most celebrated seats of 
Arabic philosophy, settled at Salerno, and after a 
while became a monk of Monte Cassino. Here he 
compiled, and dedicated to his abbot, Desiderius, 
(who, in 1086, when Gregory VII. died at Salerno, 
was elected to succeed him, under the name of 
Victor III.) several medical works, which he pro- 
fessed to be original, but which were in reality for 
the most part translations from the Arabic. It is 
likely that among the Arabic works which he thus 
made known to the Latin world, were Arabic 
versions of Greek medical writers. At least, 



UNIVERSITIES. 65 

very soon after, we find the Salernitan school in 
possession of a Latin translation of some works of 
Hippocrates, which was probably derived from an 
Arabic source. These works of Constantine gave 
an impulse to the study of medicine in Italy ; and 
as copies of them were more easily procured at 
Salerno than elsewhere, students of medicine re- 
sorted thither ; and in a short time a medical school 
was formed, in which public instruction was given 
by masters of the art. A poetical work on tlie 
preservation of health is said to have been com- 
posed by the masters of this new school, and 
addressed to Robert Duke of Normandy, the son 
of the Conqueror. If this be true, its date must 
have been either the end of the eleventh century, 
or the beginning of the twelfth.* 

Conringius more than once refers the establish- 
ment of the school of Salerno to Roger I. the Nor- 
man sovereign of Sicily and Prince of Salerno, 
about the year llOO.f It seems doubtful, how- 
ever, whether there is any ground for this asser- 
tion beyond the fact that Roger published a severe 
edict, regulating the practice of medicine, and for- 
bidding any one to attempt it, under pain of con- 
fiscation of all his goods, who was not approved 
" bt/ the mugistrates and judges^ But this edict is 
rather an argument against the importance of the 
school at this time ; since, if it had acquired any 

* Conriog. Diss. iii. s. 22. -f* Diss. i. s. 45 ; iii. s. 22. 

F 



66 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

authority, the testimonial of the masterd to the 
medical aspirant would probably have been requir- 
ed, as it was at a later time by the constitutions of 
Frederic II. If, however, this edict raised the 
standard of the medical profession, it might occa- 
sion a greater resort of students to the only seat of 
medical learning.* 

Of the fortunes of the Salernitan school during 
the twelfth century Conringius affords no particu- 
lar evidence; but ^gidius Corboliensis, a poeti- 
cal physician of Paris, who lived at the end of the 
twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, 
reproaches the University of Salerno with granting 
medical degrees, and consequently a licence to 
lecture, to unlearned and inexperienced youths : 

^^ Doctrma quibus opus esset, fenilaeque flagello, 

«« £t pendere magis vetuli doctoris ab ore, 

^' Quam sibi non dignas cathedrae prsesumere laudes."i* 

In the thirteenth century we find Frederic II. 
carefully regulating by his constitutions the whole 
practice of medicine in his paternal dominions, and 
the course of medical education in his universities 
of Salerno and Naples. He ordains, that, because 
the science of medicine cannot be understood with- 
out a previous knowledge of the rules of logic, no 
one shall study medicine unless he first study 

* See Conring. as above, and Diss. iv. s. 23. 
•f Conring. Diss. iii. ss. 18, 22. 



UNIVERSITIES. 67 

logic for three years. It is provided, however, that 
he may learn surgery before the time thus assigned. 
Then it appears that the course of medical study 
was to last five years ; and in those five years the 
masters were to teach in the schools the authentic 
books of Hippocrates and Galen, both in theoretical 
and practical medicine. Nor was any one to prac- 
tise surgery, unless he had studied that branch of 
medicine at least a year, and had learned in the 
schools the anatomy of human bodies. After five 
years of study, the student who desired to practise 
medicine was required, in the first place, to present 
himself at Salerno in the public assembly of the 
university, and to be approved by the judgment of 
the masters. After this solemn examination he was 
to receive written testimonials, not only of the mas- 
ters, but of those who had taken a degree, but did 
not teach ;* which testified that he had studied the 
requisite time, and bore evidence to his sufficient 
knowledge and his general good character. With 
these testimonials, by which the academical degree 
was conferred upon him, he was to present himself 
before the king himself, or, in his absence, before 
the viceroy of the kingdom,f and receive from him 
a licence to practise medicine. Confiscation and 
imprisonment for a year was the punishment de- 
nounced against all who should presume to heal in 

* « Tarn magistronun quam ordinatorum nostrorum/ 
•)- *^ Ad prseseDtiam nostram .... ordinatus acoedat.* 



99 



68 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

violation of this edict. The same process was 
necessary to obtain a licence to practise surgery, 
except that the time of study seems to have been 
shorter : and even when all these conditions were 
fulfilled, the new physician was required to prac- 
tise for an entire year with the counsel of an expe- 
rienced brother in the art. 

There are points in this singular ordinance which 
deserve consideration, and possibly imitation, even 
in the present age. We perceive that Frederic 
considered a preparatory education, by which the 
reasoning powers should be exercised and trained, 
to be as necessary to the physician as his course of 
professional study. He though t^t?e years a period 
not too long for a regular medical education. He 
placed a short period of apprenticeship to the prac- 
tice of the art, if so it may be called, after^ and not 
before, the course of theoretical study. And highly 
as he favoured the universities of his kingdom, he 
refused to consider an academical degree as con- 
stituting in itself a licence to practise, and required 
the licence of the supreme power to be superadded. 
The degree was merely a testimonial. 

By another part of the same constitutions he 
enacted, that no one should lecture on medicine or 
surgery, except at Salerno or Naples ; and that no 
one should take the title of master, unless he had 
been diligently examined by the masters of medi- 



UNIVERSITIES. 69 

cine and the officials of the crown. By the latter 
term we are probably to understand some digni- 
taries entrusted with the superintendence of the 
universities. 

There are several other curious provisions, which 
enact that a physician is to visit his patients twice 
a day, and once in the night, if required ; which 
regulate his fees fop a visit and a journey ; which 
prohibit his contracting for the cure of a patient 
for a fixed sum ; and which forbid his forming any 
partnership with the compounders of medicines, 
ccnfectUmariij as they are called. Much vigilance 
is exercised over these confectioners. Not only are 
they required to take an oath that they will make 
their confections according to the prescribed form, 
but in every district of the kingdom two circum- 
spect and trusty men are to be appointed, and 
bound by oath, under whose testimony all elec- 
tuaries and syrups, and other medicines, are to be 
legally made and sold. At Salerno this office is 
assigned to the masters in physic. But these are 
matters which may be interesting to a medical an- 
tiq[uary, but have little connexion with the history 
of universities.* 

There was a school of law at Salerno ; but we 
hear nothing of philosophy or theology. The uni- 
versity fell into decay from the neglect and dis- 

* Coming. Diss. iii. s. 23. 



70 ON THE ORIGII^ OF 

couragement of the French race of kings ; and in 
the time of Conringius (the seventeenth century) 
had long entirely perished. 

Frederic II. founded a university at Naples, 
and endowed it with ample privileges;* but its 
degrees were never acknowledged in other univer- 
sities. Savigny ascribes this to its peculiar consti- 
tution, by which the degrees ,were formally con- 
ferred by the king himself, and not by the acade- 
mical faculties. But it is at least as probable, that, 
as Frederic was always denounced as the enemy 
of the church, the degrees of his university never 
received from the popes that catholic extension, 
which, as we have explained, the pope alone was 
considered to have the power of giving. 

The vulgar tradition of the University of Oxford 
used to be, that it was founded by King Alfred about 
the year 890 or 895. The college called University 
College* which is the most ancient in Oxford, was 
supposed to be the germ or rudiment of the uni- 
versity; but this tradition has fared as ill in the 
hands of critical inquirers as the Parisian tradition 
of Charlemagne. There is no evidence to support 
it, except a passage found in (mly one manuscript 
of Asser, the biographer of Alfred ; which for that 
reason is justly believed to be an interpolation. 
And as to University College, nothing is recorded 
of it before the year 1219, when Roger Caldwell is 

* Conring. Diss. v. s. 9. 



UNIVERSITIES. 71 

named as the master of it ; and it seems not to 
have been endowed for the maintenance of gra- 
duates till 1280, when the university applied to this 
purpose a bequest of William Archdeacon of Dur- 
ham, who died in 1249.* It appears, however, that 
Oxford was a place of study in the reign of Edward 
the Confessor. Ingulfus, who was Abbot of Croy- 
land, in the Isle of Ely, under William the Con- 
queror, says of himself, that he was educated first 
at Westminster, and then passed to Oxford, where 
he made proficiency in such books of Aristotle as 
were then accessible to students, and in the two first 
books of Tully's rhetoric.f Mr. Hallam, with a 
tender and considerate feeling towards the old tra- 
dition, observes, '^ Since a school for dialectics and 
rhetoric subsisted at Oxford, a town of but middling 
size, and not the seat of a bishop, we are naturally 
led to refer its foundation to one of our kings ; and 
none who had reigned after Alfred appears likely 
to have manifested such zeal for learning." Mr. 
Dyer appears to hold, with regard to such tradi- 
tions of royal foundation generally, the same 
opinion which we have intimated about the con- 
nexion of the University of Paris with Charlemagne : 
" We have been for giving the foundation of Ox- 

* Camden's Britannia. See also Dyer's Privileges of the 
Univernty of Cambridge, vol. ii. Diss. Gen. p. clxii. 

f Conring. Diss. iii. s. 7* Hallam, State of Europe during 
the Middle Ages, chap. ix. part ii. ; ed. Iv. vol. iii. p. 524. 



72 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

ford University to Alfred, &c. ; correctly, however, 
only so far as princes may have founded or en- 
couraged schools, and prepared the way for what 
we now call universities."* 

For more than half a century after the time 
when Ingulfus must have studied at Oxford, we 
find no traces of the existence of the school. Ro- 
bert Pulein, a theologian from Paris, expounded 
the Holy Scriptures at Oxford under the patronage 
of Henry I. (Beauclerc), and gave new life to 
the study of theology in England. He continued 
his labours under the protection of Henry H. 
till he was called to Rome, and became chan- 
cellor of the apostolic see.f In the reign of Ste- 
phen we find that Vacarius, a Lombard by birth, 
who had studied the civil law at Bologna, came 
into England, and formed a school of law at Ox- 
ford. It is clear, as Mr. Hallam observes, that a 
foreign teacher would not have selected that city 
as the place for his exertions, if he had not found 
a seminary of learning already established there. 
The students of philosophy and theology opposed 
themselves to this new science ; and Stephen pro- 
hibited Vacarius from teaching, and even demanded 
that the books of law should be delivered up to 
him. But this prohibition appears to have had 

• Privileges of the University of Cambridge, vol. i. p. 383, 
note. 

•j- Camden*s Britannia. 



UNIVERSITIES. 73 

little effect; since we find by two decretals of 
Alexander III. of 1164 and 1170, that Vacarius 
remained in England in the reign of Henry U.; 
and we may reasonably conclude that he did not 
remain here idle: inde'ed, there is evidence that 
he founded a school of law, in which he had suc- 
cessors; since we find from Giraldus Cambrensis 
and another contemporary authority, that there 
was a great rivalry between the legists and the 
artistSy who complained that the study of philoso- 
phy was depreciated in comparison with the study 
of law. 

On account of the difficulty and expense of ob- 
taining copies of the original books of the Roman 
law, and the poverty of his English scholars, Vaca- 
rius compiled an abridgement of the digests and 
codex, in which their most essential parts were 
preserved, with some difference of arrangement, 
and illustrated from the other law-books. Manu- 
scripts of this work are still in existence. It bore 
on its title that it was ** pauperilms presertim desti" 
natus /" and hence the Oxford students of law ob- 
tained the name of Pauper istcB. Savigny says that 
this book was written in England about the year 
1 149. Vacarius, therefore, must have commenced 
his public lectures a little before that time ; and we 
thus gain a date for the reappearance of the school 
of Oxford.* 
* Hallam, vol. ill. pp. 517* 525 : Savigny, torn. iv. c. 36. 



74 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

The study of the civil law obtained but little 
favour in England, except with the clergy. The 
resistance of the nation to the encroachments of 
the papacy in the reign of John, disposed all lay- 
men to look with suspicion on a system of law im- 
ported from Italy, and recommended by ecclesi- 
astical authority, and they preferred adhering to 
their own traditionary common law. Afler a time 
even the clergy regarded the civil law only as sub- 
sidiary to the study of the canon law. The canon 
law must have followed close upon the civil law, 
and have been taught at Oxford within a few years 
after the publication of Gratian's Decrettmi ; for 
the Benedictines of St. Maur bear testimony to the 
existence of an eminent school of canon law at 
Oxford about the end of the twelfth century, to 
which many students repaired from Paris.* 

The testimony of Ant. a Wood expressly con- 
firms Savigny's opinion, by assigning 1149 as the 
date of the introduction of the civil law into Ox- 
ford ; and he refers to the same date, or to a time 
very little later, the introduction of the scholastic 
theology and of the degree of doctor.f It can 
scarcely be doubted that these latter were intro- 
duced from Paris; and it may be suspected that 
a Wood is a little too early in claiming for Oxford 

* Hist. Litt. de la France, t. ix. p. 216 : cited by Mr. 
Hallam. 

f Hist. et. Antiq. Univ. Oxon. lib. i. p. 24. in Itter. 



UNIVERSITIES. 75 

the title of doctor. Of course, when the appella- 
tion was first used, it signified merely teaehery 
and was not a technical degree. A. Wood states 
his belief that mention may be found of masters in 
theology in pubhc acts of the reign of Richard I. 
Camden assigns the reigns of Henry II. and 
Richard as the period in which the university 
grew up to a flourishing condition, and commemo- 
rates Robert Pulein as the chief author of its cele- 
brity. 

Oxford is called a universih/ in a public instru- 
ment of the drd of John, a.d. 1201, which is of 
earlier date than any extant application of the 
word to Paris.* In that year, according to Wood, 
it contained three thousand scholars.f Its earliest 
charter was granted by John. Its privileges were 
confirmed and extended by Henry III. in 1255 ; 
Edward I. in 1275 ; Edward II. in 1315 ; and Ed- 
ward III. in 1327 ; and by succeeding kings. It 
appears that the university sought a recognition 
and renewal of its privileges at the beginning of 
every new reign. The same was the case with the 
University of Cambridge. Their privileges now 
depend upon the Act of Incorporation, which was 
passed with regard to both of them in the thir- 
teenth of Elizabeth, a.d. 1570. The body of sta- 
tutes, which is still nominally unrepealed, how- 

• Dyer, Privileges, vol. i. p. 412, note. 
f Hist, and Antiq. p. 177* 



76 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

ever modified by subsequent interpretations, ad- 
ditions, or restrictions, or silently antiquated in 
practice ; which the university still professes to 
obey, and which every member of it swears to 
obey; was compiled in 1636, when Archbishop 
Laud was chancellor, chiefly from the existing 
statutes, and was solemnly ratified by the convo- 
cation, the chancellor, and the king.* 

The University of Oxford was confirmed by 
papal authority, and received such privileges as the 
See of Rome claimed the power of bestowing. It 
was mentioned in the Constitutions published by 
Clement V. after the council of Vienne, a.d. 1311, 
in company with Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca. 
It was ordained that schools should be erected for 
Hebrew, and Arabic, and Chaldee, in each of these 
stadia; and that all prelates and ecclesiastical 
corporations in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ire- 
land should be taxed for the maintenance of pro- 
fessors of these tongues at Oxford. These were 
the same Constitutions mentioned above, in which 
the expense upon taking a doctor s degree was 
limited. 

We have, however, several notable instances, 
how little the authority of the popes was regarded, 
or rather how utterly it was denied, by the more 
vigorous of our kings, in matters relating to the 
universities. Edward I. published a brief, which was 

• Edinb. Rev. 



UNIVERSITIES. 77 

confirmed by a parliament held at York, against the 
preaching friars, and their proceedings at Oxford, 
although they were supported by papal bulls.* 
Edward III. in the fortieth year of his reign, in 
consequence of petitions of the universities of Ox- 
ford and Cambridge on the one hand, and of the 
friars of the four mendicant orders on the other, 
made an ordinance, with the assent of parliament, 
by which, after removing a prohibition imposed by 
the universities upon the admission of young scho- 
lars into the aforesaid orders, it was enacted, that 
all bulls and processes issuing from the court of 
Rome, and procured by the friars against either 
of the universities or any person in them, should 
thenceforth be absolutely null and void ; and the 
friars were forbidden to use or allege them.t It is 
true that the bulls and citations seem to have been 
procured by the friars in consequence of a statute 
of the universities which they deemed a grievance, 
and which the king and parliament repealed ; but 
it is observable that the act does not wait for the 
See of Rome to recall its edicts, but at once de- 
clares them null and void. In like manner the 
same king, in the forty-ninth year of his reign, 
abrogated statutes made by the chancellor and 

* Ayliffe*s Hist, of Oxford, vol. ii. pp. 19, 20, in Dyer's 
PrivU. vol. i. p. 426. 

•f The Act is given at length in the Norman French, 
Dyer's Privileges, vol. i. pp. 71> 72. 



78 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

proctors and the rest of the governing body of the 
university, cited the official persons before him, and 
removed them for contumacy, although they plead- 
ed in justification the pope's bulls.* It is true that 
many assumptions of authority on the part of the 
Roman See were received with silence or sub- 
mission, especially by less able princes ; but these 
precedents are sufficient to show that constitu- 
tionally the power of the king and parliament was 
held to be supreme, and the interference of the 
pontiff was only by sufferance. It is clear, likewise, 
that our early kings did not consider the universi- 
ties as corporations, to be among the objects of 
ecclesiastical superintendence, but took them under 
their own peculiar authority. Thus, Henry III. 
once, when he was going to Gascony, appointed 
the Archbishop of York and two others guardians 
of the university, to receive complaints during his 
absence. If it had been subject to ecclesiastical 
authority, the Bishop of Lincoln, the bishop of the 
diocese, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, the me- 
tropolitan of the province, would have been the 
proper depositaries of all complaint8.f 

In 1209 John caused three scholars of the Uni- 
versity of Oxford to be hanged on a charge of mur- 
der ; and in consequence the whole body of scholars 
left the town to pursue their studies elsewhere, 

• Dyer's Privil. vol. i. p. 426. 

t Dyer's Privil. vol. i. p. 426, from Ant. a Wood. 



UNIVERSITIES. ' 79 

some betaking themselves to Cambridge, some to 
Reading.^ It may be presumed that they soon 
returned ; for the university continued to flourish. 
It was augmented in 1229, and the following year^ 
by a similar migration of the discontented scholars 
of Paris, who were invited over by Henry Ill.'t' 
Wood gives an exaggerated statement of the num- 
ber of scholars at this time, from which it may 
fairly be deduced that it was really very great.J 
The university continued to flourish in the follow- 
ing reigns : Matthew of Paris expressly ranked 
Oxford as an ecclesiastical school next to Paris, 
and called it the foundation of the church.§ It 
must have suffered, no doubt, in the wars of the 
Koses; the increase of universities on the Conti- 
nent checked the influx of foreign students ; and 
after the commencement of the Reformation in 
England under Henry VIII. when the monastic 
orders were dissolved and their property confis- 
cated, and the church in its unsettled state offered 
to students of theology few prizes except the crown 
of martyrdom, the number of scholars was very 

* Matth. Paris, in Mr. Hallam. 

•f See above. The earliest authentic document in Hare's 
Register of the Charters, &c. of the University of Cambridge, 
is of Henry HI. An. Reg. 13, a.d. 1229, "Liter» Pa- 
tentes ad Universitatem Parisiensem transmissse pro scholari- 
bus invitandis, ut se studii causd in Angliam transferant." 

X See Hallam, vol. iii. p. 626. 

§ Coming. Diss. iii. s. 7) and Wood. 



80 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

much diminished. In the year 1546 there were 
only thirteen degrees conferred ; and in 1552, 
though the students who had their names on the 
books were a thousand and fifteen, yet the greater 
part were absent, and had in effect quitted the 
university.* The general establishment of schools, 
and the invention of printing, which causes private 
study to be substituted for attendance on the oral 
instruction of public lectures, have prevented the 
university in modern times from ever equalling the 
ancient number of its pupils ; but it is not our in- 
tention to trace this part of its more recent history. 
Collegiate foundations were established in Ox- 
ford at a very early period. Of the existing 
colleges, University College and Baliol College 
were founded before the end of the reign of 
Henry III. ; Merton College in the reign of Ed- 
ward I. ; and Oriel College was founded by Adam 
de Brome, with the licence of Edward II. So little 
honour is attached in history to the memory of this 
unhappy prince, that it will be charitable to bear 
in mind his connexion with a foundation which is 
now the institution of the greatest utility and high- 
est reputation in the university. The motive for 
these foundations was the same which we have 
explained above in speaking of the University of 
Paris: to give the scholars facilities for obtaining 
lodgings, to relieve the indigent from some portion 

• A. Wood, in Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. p. 410. 



universities/ 81 

of their expenses, and to provide more effectually 
for discipline by introducing into the university a 
species of domestic superintendence. But the 
number of colleges in which provision was made by 
endowment for the pecuniary benefit of their mem- 
bers, was nothing in comparison with the number 
o£ halls or inns in which the students liv^d chiefly 
at their own expense, and which merely furnished 
cheap and convenient lodging, and the supervision 
of a respectable tutor or principal, who was responsi- 
ble to the university for the good conduct of his pupils. 
In the early part of the fourteenth century, at the 
commencement of the reign of Edward 11. the 
number of halls is said to have been about three 
hundred, while the colleges were only three.* For 
the establishment of these halls nothing more was 
necessary, than that a certain number of scholars 
should agree to live together, and find a doctor 
or master of their own choice, to act as their prin- 
cipal ; and that they should hire a house, and find 
caution for a year's rent. The chancellor or vice- 
chancellor could not refuse to sanction the esta- 
blishment, and admit the principal to his office. 
In general the halls were held only upon lease ; but 
by privileges similar to those which have been no- 
ticed in foreign universities, the rent of the halls 
was fixed every five years by the taxors, and scho- 
lars could not be ejected by the proprietor from a 

• Wood, A.D. 1307, in Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. p. 409. 

G 



82 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

building once occupied by them, so long as they 
punctually paid the stipulated rent. The halls were 
always subject to be visited and regulated by the 
authority of the university.* The causes which 
diminished the number of students in the university 
diminished the number of halls, though the number 
of endowed colleges gradually increased. At the 
commencement of the fifteenth century the stu- 
dents were decreasing, while the colleges had in- 
creased to seven. In the early part of the sixteenth 
century the number of halls had fallen to ffty-five^ 
while the endowed colleges amounted to twelve.t 
Not very long after, the university, in a public 
letter addressed to Sir Thomas More^ complaining 
of its general state of decay, spoke of the ruin of 
the halls, and explained that the colleges alone were 
enabled to preserve their existence by means of 
the endowments provided for their members. In 
1546 there were only eight inhabited halls ;J and 
five years after the historian remarks that the 
ancient halls were either desolate, or were become 
receptacles of poor religious people turned out of 
their cloisters. In these circumstances the halls 
lost their value as property to the owners, and 
several were bought up at a low rate by the col- 
leges. The old colleges thus extended their build- 

• Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. pp. 408 and 412. 

t Wood, A.D. 1503 and 1516. Edinb. Rev. p. 409. 

X Wood. 



UNIVERSITIES. 83 

ings. Before this period they had rarely, if ever, 
admitted any pupils who were not members upon 
their foundations, and provided for by endow- 
ment; but now they began to take iii pupils who 
were not on their foundations ; and the diminution 
of the number of students in the university made it 
possible for them to receive them almost all. Six 
new colleges were founded in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, partly, it may reasonably be concluded, in 
consequence of the little cost with which sites for 
them could be purchased. Since that period, one 
college has been founded (Wadham, in 1610, or 
soon after) ; and three of the eight surviving halls 
changed by endowment into colleges, of which how- 
ever one is since extinct. 

It cannot be questioned, that one reason of the 
decay of the halls and the increase of the colleges 
was the more effectual superintendence and tui- 
tion which was supplied in the colleges, in con- 
sequence of the number of graduates who were 
members of them. In later times, since the tuition 
of the colleges has supplanted the public instruction 
of the university delivered by professors and public 
lecturers, in the way which will be explainfed pre- 
sently, it is absolutely necessary to the existence 
of the halls to have tutors in addition to their prin- 
cipals. But besides the natural operation of these 
. causes, there has been a piece of university legisla- 
tion, by which the monopoly of the colleges has been 



84 ON THB ORIGIN OP 

hitherto secured against any revival of the halls. 
When the all-powerful Earl of Leicester was chan- 
cellor of the university, about 1570, he obtained 
from the university the absolute right of nominating 
the principals of all halls (except St. Edmund Hall, 
which is attached to Queen's College), and conse- 
quently in effect a veto upon the institution of new 
halls; and this right is now vested by statute in 
his successors. The colleges, which had then be- 
gun to exercise great influence in the university, 
had clearly an interested motive in procuring this 
concession; and since that time no new hall has 
been opened.* 

This review of the progress and changes of the 
collegiate foundations, and of other places for the 
residence of the students, must be considered in 
connexion with another point of the discipline of 
the university. It has long been necessary for 
every member of the university below the degree 
of master of arts to be also a member of some 
college or hall ; and, in fact, the graduates as 
well as undergraduates are attached to some 

• The Edinburgh Review, which has been followed in this 
account of the origin and progress of the coUegiate founda- 
tions, and of the relative position of the colleges and halls, 
cites as its authorities on this point, '^ Wood, Hist, et Antiq. 
Univ. lib. ii. p. 339. Hist, and Antiq. of Coll. and Halls, 
p. 655 ; and Statuta Aularia, sect, v.'* 



UNIVERSITIES. 85 

foundation.* In the earliest times the scholars 
lodged in the houses of the townsmen, as in Paris 
and Bologna, and attended such lectures as they 
chose. In 1231 it was ordained that "every clerk 
or scholar resident in Oxford must subject himself 
to the discipline and tuition of some master of the 
schools." But this seems to mean only that he 
must become the regular auditor of some regent 
master ; it did not imply any domestic superin- 
tendence, and had nothing to do with residence. 
But in the beginning of the fifteenth century it 
had become the established rule that every scho- 
lar must be a member of some college or hall. 
The scholars who attended the public lectures of 
the university, without entering themselves at any 
college or hall, were called chamber dekyns^ as in 
Paris they were called martinets; and frequent 
enactments were made against them.t In Paris, 
as we have seen, it was only the scholars of the 

* In Cambridge, a master of arts or superior graduate, if 
he be resident in the town, may retain his privileges as a 
member of the university, although his name be not on the 
books of any eoUege. The ^^ commorantes in villa,'' as they 
are called, are generally professors or other officers of the uni- 
versity who are married, and who thus escape certain coUege 
payments. Their number is small, but they are remarkable 
as a monument of the early times, when the university was, 
and the colleges were not. 

t Wood, Ann. 1408, 1413, 1422, 1612, &c. 



86 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

faculty of arts who were compelled to enter at 
some college ; but in Oxford the obligation was 
imposed on all alike. 

In connexion with this subject, we may remark 
a point which will seem strange to those who know 
only the actual state of the university. Entrance 
at a college or haU did not imply entrance under 
any particular tutor. Young students — and many in 
those days were mere boys — were placed by their 
friends under the care of tutors; but these were 
private tutors ; and the university did not interfere 
with the private arrangement. It was not till the 
time when Leicester was chancellor, that the uni- 
versity undertook to regulate who might be tutors ; 
and it was not till the chancellorship of Laud, that 
it was made necessary to enter under a tutor re- 
sident in the same college or hall with the pupil. 
Laud, therefore, may be regarded as the author of 
the system of college tuition.* 

The necessity of entering at some college or 
hall, and the difficulty interposed in the way of 
opening new halls like those of old time, are points 
which deserve the most attentive consideration, 
in connexion with the question which has been 
recently revived of the abolition of religious tests 
and subscriptions, and the admission of dissenters 
to the universities. The late discussions have 



^h, Bev. p. 392. oomparing Wood, a.d. 1581, 
At. t. ill. 1.2. 



and 



UNIVERSITIES. 87 

made it notorious, that at Oxford the student is 
required at his matriculation to subscribe the 
Thirty-nine Articles. This subscription was origi- 
nally imposed by the Earl of Leicester. It may 
be removed by the authority of parliament, along 
with all similar subscriptions and oaths required 
upon taking a degree; and thus the university 
may be nominally opened to those who dissent 
from the established church : and yet it is evident 
that, even if this were done, the design of the legis- 
lature might be frustrated by the separate colleges. 
They might go so far as to require subscription 
from all who entered them. It is not unlikely that 
they would require it from members on their 
foundations, if something equivalent be not re- 
quired already. But without putting this case, it 
is clear that by strictly insisting upon attendance 
on the prayers in the college chapel and at the 
administration of the holy communion, and by 
lectures and examinations directed to the peculi- 
arities of the theological system of the church of 
England, they might deter conscientious dissenters 
from joining them, or render their college residence 
exceedingly irksome: and yet there is no access 
to the university but through the colleges. The 
colleges might thus debar the dissenters from the 
advantages which the legislature is supposed to 
have conceded to them ; and at the same time 
they might argue plausibly that they themselves 



88 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

were exempt from legislative interference. Though 
the universities beyond all doubt are public and 
national establishments, and their public character 
is emphatically recognised by their sending mem- 
bers to parliament, the colleges in both universi- 
ties (with perhaps one exception) are strictly 
private foundations. Trinity College, Cambridge, 
inasmuch as it was endowed by Henry VIII. with 
the confiscated property of the religious houses, 
may perhaps be considered as a public institution ; 
but the other foundations, even those of royal 
origin, must be acknowledged to be private. Now, 
so long as private institutions obey the directions 
of their founders, and do no positive evil, it may 
be fairly argued that the le^rislature has no right to 
interfere with them. No doubt, if they do harm, the 
legislature may stop them ; but it would be a strong 
doctrine to argue that it may rightfully compel them 
to do more good than they otherwise would do. And 
thus the colleges might suppose that parliament 
would not intermeddle with their internal discipline. 
If the bill which was rejected in the last ses- 
sion of parliament should be passed in any future 
session, and if any colleges should be inclined to 
manifest their opposition in the way supposed, it 
would be prudent in them to reflect, that if private 
institutions, by their influence in the government 
of a public institution, so incorporate themselves 
with it that no one can belong to the public insti- 



UNIVERSITIES. 89 

tution without at the same time belonging to some 
one of the private institutions, the public does not 
become private by this union, but the private make 
themselves public, and in this respect may right- 
fully be dealt with as public bodies. But it would 
be wise to avoid the occasion for such exertion 
of authority; and I would suggest to those per- 
sons who are exerting themselves to remove the 
legal impediments to the admission of dissenters 
to the universities, that, to make their measure 
effectual, it will be necessary to remove the obsta- 
cle to the erection of new halls ; that is, to repeal 
the statute by which the absolute nomination of 
the principal is vested in the chancellor or his 
deputy, and, as in old time, to allow any master or 
doctor to open a hall, and to become the principal of 
it, subject to removal only by the act of the whole 
university on specific cause shown against him. 
If the ancient system be thus revived, the dissent- 
ing students, who are desirous of entering the uni- 
versity, may have their independent halls: in process 
of time, any sect that wishes it may have a hall of 
its own, in which it may assemble its students for 
its peculiar religious exercises, and instruct them 
in its peculiar religious tenets. The existing col- 
leges may thus remain seminaries of the Church of 
England, and be preserved from that intermixture 
which they deprecate as inconsistent with the dis- 
cipline an^ the system of education which they 



90 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

think themselves bound in conscience to uphold. 
I have addressed this suggestion in the first 
place to the advocates of the dissenters; but I 
would address it with equal earnestness to their 
opponents in the universities, as an easy and bene- 
ficial compromise under a pressure which it re- 
quires no spirit of prophecy to foretell that they 
will not long be able to resist.* 

There is no reason to fear lest graduates should 
not be found to assume the ofiices of principals 
and tutors in the new halls. Recent events have 
made it manifest that at Cambridge, at least, such 
men might be found among the resident members 
of the university distinguished for ability and learn- 
ing. But there is no reason why the power should 
be confined to the members actually resident, or 
even to those whose names are now on the college 
books. Any graduate of the university may be sup- 
posed to be equally competent, and by undertaking 
the office would become equally responsible. 

It would be a collateral benefit arising from the 
growth of such institutions, that as at first they 
would be more scantily supplied with internal tui- 
tion than the ancient colleges, the professors and 
public lecturers of the universities might either be 
induced by self-interest, or might be called upon 
by authority^ to resume the office of instruction 

* Siiioe thii puwge was written, the same suggestion has 
Imou Bwde in the Edinlmrgh Review, No. cxxi, October, 1834. 



UNIVERSITIES. 91 

which is imposed upon them by the ancient consti- 
tution of the university, and which now in general 
they have practically renounced, and suffered to 
slip into the hands of the college tutors. 

These remarks on the mode in which the uni- 
versities may best be opened to dissenters, apply 
equally to Oxford and Cambridge. I have thrown 
the discussion into the review of the history of 
Oxford, because there was not before me equally 
ample information with regard to the changes in 
the collegiate system of Cambridge. From the 
resemblance in the origin and constitution of the 
two universities, their resemblance in their earliest 
periods, and their resemblance at the present day, 
and from the identity of the circumstances in which 
they have been placed, it cannot be doubted that 
similar revolutions have happened in both. I shall 
now proceed to the history of Cambridge; and 
after a slight sketch of it, I shall endeavour to 
show how both our English universities have devi- 
ated from their original constitution in their method 
of instruction and in their internal government. 
.. The traditions of the Universities of Paris and 
Oxford, with regard to their foundation by the 
famous kings Charlemagne and Alfred, are such as 
would tempt chroniclers to repeat them without 
stopping to consider the truth of them ; but the 
tradition of the origin of the University of Cam- 
bridge is of so very unpretending a character, that 



92 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

though the external evidence for it is not very 
strong, it may fairly be lefl to stand on its own 
probability. It is said that Joffred, Abbot of Croy- 
land in 1109, successor of Ingulphus, ^' sent over to 
his manor of Cotenham nigh Cambridge, Gislebert, 
his fellow monk and professor of divinity, and three 
other monks who followed him into England (from 
Orleans). From Cotenham they daily repaired to 
Cambridge. There they hired a public barn, made 
open profession of their sciences, and in a little 
time drew a number of scholars together. In less 
than two years' time, their number increased so 
much, from the country as well as town, that there 
was never a house, barn, or church, big enough to 
hold them all. Upon which they dispersed them- 
selves in different parts of the town, imitating the 
University of Orleans." Three of the party taught 
the three branches of the Trivium, — grammar, logic, 
and rhetoric ; and Gislebert preached to the people 
on Sundays and holidays.* 

* Peter of Blois ; appendix to Ingulfus : in Camden's 
Britannia, and Gale's Script. Angl. vol. i. p. 114. The 
mention of the University of Orleans probably involves 
an anachronism, since Savigny notes nothing more of the 
antiquity of this school, than that it was already flourishing 
in 1236 ; and that it was not very ancient may be presumed 
from its not receiving the confirmation of the pope and the 
king of France till the beginning of the fourteenth century. 
It appears, however, that there was an ancient school attach- 
ed to the cathedral, out of which the university grew. See 
below, p. 101. 



UNIYEBSITIBS. 93 

An old building is pointed out at this day as 
the barn in which these missionaries of learning 
taught, or at least as retaining some portion of its 
walls. 

Mr. Hallam thinks that the earliest mention of 
Cambridge as a place of learning is in the passage 
of Matthew of Paris, already cited, in which he re- 
lates, that in 1209 many of the students of Oxford 
migrated thither, in consequence of an act of seve- 
rity on the part of King John. He thinks that they 
would not have removed themselves to a town so 
distant, if it had not been already a seat of acade- 
mical instruction.* 

Mr. Dyer states that he finds the term university 
applied to Cambridge in a public instrument of 
122d.t According to Mr. Hallam, the date of its 
first incorporation is the 15th of Henry III. or 
1231. if In Hare's Register of the Charters and 
other Monuments of the Liberties and Privileges 
of the University, which is the authority on which 
the university relies, there is no charter of incor- 
poration of this year, nor indeed any of this mon- 
arch ; but there are many public letters of Henry 
relating to the university, the earliest of which are 
of the date mentioned by Mr. Hallam. These fully 
recognize the existence of the university, and of 

* State of Europe during the Middle Ages, ed. 4. vol. iii. 
p. 527<« note. 

•f- Priv. vol. ii. p. 412, note. X As above. 



94 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

its masters and chancellor; the authority of the 
chancellor and masters ; and some customs and 
privileges of the university. It is probably, there- 
fore, to these documents that Mr. Hallam refers, 
as implying an incorporation ; or he may have been 
misled by an inaccurate description of them. One 
of the most important of these early monuments is 
a royal letter addressed to the sheriff of the county, 
(vice-comesy) calling upon him " to repress the in- 
subordination of the clerks and scholars, and to 
compel them to obedience to the injunctions of the 
Bishop of Ely, either by imprisonment or banish- 
ment from the university, according to the discre- 
tion of the chancellor and masters." 

A singular mixture of jurisdictions is implied in 
this letter. The authority of the Bishop of Ely in 
the University is distinctly recognized ; but the 
contumacious who resist it are in fact to be tried 
and judged by the chancellor and masters, and the 
civil power of the sheriff is called in to execute 
their sentence. In like manner there is a royal 
letter addressed to the sheriff in the twenty-sixth 
of Henry III. which Dyer has given at full length.* 
In this letter it is ordered, that when " any clerk 
of the university of scholars studying at • Cam- 
bridge" has been guilty of any misdemeanour, and 
has been convicted by the university, and sen- 
tenced to imprisonment, if the burgesses of the 

• Privileges, vol. i. p. 62. 



UNIVERSITIES. 95 

town are negligent in executing the sentence or 
unable to do so, the sheriff, upon the warrant of the 
chancellor of the university, is to cause such male- 
factor to be apprehended and committed to prison, 
and kept in safe custody, until the chancellor de- 
mand his liberation ; and upon the demand of the 
chancellor he is to be liberated. We see, therefore, 
that the university in its early days enjoyed a pleni- 
tude of jurisdiction, and received a support from 
the civil power, which seem not to have been ac- 
corded to the universities on the Continent. There 
is another royal enactment of the forty-fifth of 
Henry III. in which the privileges of the univer- 
sity are still more distinctly recognized : " That 
the king's justices are not to interfere in hearing 
and determining offences between the scholars and 
laymen ;*' the latter term meaning those who were 
not scholars. Another most significant document 
of the earliest date, that is, of the fifteenth of 
Henry III. is a royal letter, which provides that 
lodgings or hostels fhospitiaj shall be taxed (i. e, 
valued) " according to the custom of the university^ 
namely, by two masters and two respectable and 
lawful men of the town, and let to the scholars ac- 
cording to their valuation." This order was repeated 
in letters patent of the fiftieth of the same king, 
with the addition that the valuation was to be re- 
peated every five years : we have seen the same 
privilege in force at Oxford. 



96 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

These and the other documents are prefaced in 
Hare's collection by the letters of invitation, which 
have been mentioned already, addressed to the 
scholars of the University of Paris two years before, 
viz. in 1229. It would appear, therefore, that this 
protection accorded by the king to the hitherto 
unnoticed school of Cambridge arose out of the 
circumstances which caused the scholars of Paris 
to quit their university and seek instruction in 
England. 

Many of the royal letters of this and the follow- 
ing reigns relate to disputes between the university 
and the corporation of the town about their re- 
spective privileges ; and a frequent cause of com- 
plaint is the remissness of the magistrates of the 
town in executing the sentences of the chancellor. 
The jurisdiction of the university in all cases, 
whether civil or criminal, except those of felony and 
mayhem, in which one of the parties was a master 
or scholar, is repeatedly confirmed: nor was this 
privilege questioned in the king's courts. In con- 
sequence of a suit for false imprisonment insti- 
tuted by a scholar against the chancellor of the 
university, which seems to have been pending more 
than three years, and in the course of which the 
chancellor was committed to Newgate, the chan- 
cellor and his successors were ultimately secured 
by an act of parliament against any such action for 



UNIVERSITIES. 97 

any exercise of their jurisdiction.* The court of 
Chancery, however, appears to have exercised a 
power of supervision, or possibly was a court of 
appeal.f 

Another fruitful subject of royal letters is the 
supply of provisions, and the controul exercised 
over victuallers of all sorts, and the regulations 
which the wisdom of our ancestors propounded 
2Lgain8tforest(Ulers and regraters. The whole power 
in such matters was finally vested in the chancellor, 
to the exclusion of the town magistrates, in conse- 
quence of a great riot, in which the townspeople 
had carried away and burned the charters and other 
muniments of the university. J 

The first formal charter which is extant was 
granted by Edward I. in the twentieth year of his 
reign. Charters more and more ample were granted 
by Edward II. Edward III. Richard II. and Henry 
IV. in the very beginning of their reigns, as we 
have observed to be the case with the Oxford 
charters. These charters were confirmed by Ed- 
ward IV. Edward VI. and Elizabeth; and they 
were finally ratified by the act of parliament for 
the incorporation of the two universities, in the 

• Edward III. Ann. Reg. 9, 10, 11, 12 ; Dyer's Privileges, 

pp. 16, 17. 

t Richard II. A.R. 15 ; Dyer's Priv. p. 28, No. 64. 
+ Richard II. A.R. 6 ; Dyer, p. 23. 

H 



98 ON THB ORIGIN OF 

thirteenth of Elizabeth.* The statutes, which are 
the basis of the actual laws of the university, and 
of which by far the greater part, although practi- 
cally obsolete, are still nominally binding, had been 
given by Elizabeth in the preceding year. An. Reg. 
12, A.D. 1570 ; and it may be assumed that they 
were considered as confirmed by the subsequent 
act of parliament as well as the grants and char- 
ters.f 

In Hare's Collection there are comparatively but 
few bulls or papal rescripts. In the reign of Henry 
VIll. the university and colleges were required to 
send in their grants, charters, statutes, bulls, &c ; 
and though the charters, &c. were restored, it seems 
doubtful whether the bulls were ever returned.^ 
We are not certain, therefore, whether we possess 
the most ancient documents of this kind. There is 
a rescript of Gregory IX. (1227-1241), addressed 
to the Prior of Barnwell, and the chancellor of the 
univeraityy the existence of which, under its proper 
head, must have been thus recognized. When 
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded St. Peter's 
college, he obtained a royal charter from Edward 
I. in 1274, and a confirmation from the pope. We 
find no papal bull relating to the university in the 

* 13 Eliz. ch. 29. 

*!- Dyer doubts the virtual confirmation ; Hist, of Univ. of 
Cambridge, and Privileges, vol. i. pp. 158, 447 : but Serjeant 
M iller^s opinion seems sound. 

X Dyer's Privil. vol. i. p. 394. 



UNIVERSITIES. 99 

time of Edward I. yet it is not unlikely that one 
was issued in confirmation of the charter granted 
by him in the twentieth year of his reign ; at 
least, we find it mentioned by an old writer, Robert 
de Remington, that in this reign Cambridge from 
a stadium was made a university^ such as there 
was at Oxford, by the court of Rome.* It is ob- 
servable, however, that in the constitution of Cle- 
ment V. relating to the universities of Europe, 
issued in 1311, although Oxford is mentioned, 
Cambridge is not named. Mr. Dyer thinks that 
it was not officially known to the pope as a uni- 
versity, t Edward II. in the tenth year of his 
reign (a.d. 1316-1317), granted a charter to the 
university, confirming the charter which he had 
granted before, and adding some new privileges : 
at the same time he sought a confirmation of the 
privileges of the university from the papal see; 
and a bull was issued accordingly by John XXII., 
which is given at length by Dyer.j: It was issued 
at Avignon, in the second year of his pontificate, 

• " De Studio Granihrig facta est Universitas, sicut est 
Oxonis, per Curiam Romanam ;" Conring. Diss. ii. s. 7? from 
Arnold Wion. -f Privil. vol. i. p. 414. 

X Privileges, vol. i. p. 60. The king's letter to the pope, 
and the pope's bull, are registered in their proper places in 
the Index to Hare's Collection, under Edward II. Nos. ] 3 and 
14. But elsewhere the bull is absurdly described as a bull of 
John X. and referred to the time of Edward the Elder, son of 
Alfred. See Dyer, vol. i. p. 410. 



100 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

(1217-1218.) It mentions privileges conferrecl 
by former popes as well as by former kings, and 
confirms them all. It ordains that there shall be 
thenceforth at Cambridge a stvdium genercUey and 
that every faculty shall be maintained there ; and 
that the college of masters and scholars of the said 
studium shall be accounted a university, and enjoy 
all rights which any university whatsoever lawfully 
established can and ought to enjoy. From this 
document we may learn, that those writers are 
mistaken who affirm that studium or studium gene- 
rale is synonymous with universitas ; and that the 
technical use of the German academicians of later 
times, by which a studium was distinguished from 
a university only as not conferring degrees, was 
equally a departure from the ancient and proper 
use of the terms. Studium is a place of study. 
A studium generale is a place where all branches 
of learning are taught ; the very meaning which by 
an erroneous etymology has been fastened on the 
word university : a university is a corporation of per- 
sons.* From the date of this bull Cambridge was 
recognized among the universities of Christendom. 
As far as our records enable us to judge, Cam- 
bridge was not much troubled by papal bulls or 
rescripts ; and it was singularly free from ecclesias- 
tical interference at home. In all universities the 
chancellor was the " fountain of honour," the officer 
by whose authority degrees were conferred ; and 

* So Savigny. 



UNIVERSITIES. 101 

this dignity gave considerable power. In France 
and Italv, where schools had been attached to 
collegiate churches, there was usually a member 
of the college or chapter who was called schoktstt- 
cus ; originally, we may suppose, the schoolmaster : 
and where universities grew out of such schools, 
the scholasticus not unfrequently became the chan- 
cellor. Thus the chancellor of the University of 
Orleans was the scholasticus of the cathedral.* The 
bishop of the diocese was very often the chancellor, 
especially where the university was placed in an 
episcopal city ; and if not the bishop, some other 
ecclesiastical dignitary. Thus we have seen that 
at Paris the bishop was the chancellor of the 
faculty of theology; the chancellor of St. Ge- 
nevieve of the rest of the university : at Bologna, 
the archdeacon was the chancellor of the lawyers, 
physicians, and artistae ; the bishop, of the theolo- 
gians. In the German universities the chancellor 
was generally the bishop.t 

In England it happened fortunately for the uni- 
versities that neither Oxford nor Cambridge was a 

* Savigny. About the scholastic canons^ or scholarchse, 
see Conring. Diss. iii. ss. 5 and 16, and Suppl. xliii. s. 2. 

*{- See a list of universities, with their chancellors, in Itter, 
cap. V. s. 6. Itter, who is a protestant, and leans to the im- 
perial side in disputed questions of jurisdiction, stoutly resists 
the inference that universities are ecclesiastical corporations. 
Conringius, who inclines to the papal side, affirms boldly — 
^^ Accedit, quod omnis gradium collatio olim facta fuerit, et 



104 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

those at Avignon; and to this circumstance pro- 
bably it owed this extension of its privileges and 
independence. In 1430, Pope Martin V. who was 
a great patron of universities, commissioned certain 
delegates to inquire whether the university by grant 
or custom were subject to the ecclesiastical juris- 
diction of their chancellor, and exempt from that of 
aU others; empowering his delegates, if they should 
find it so, to confirm by his authority that jurisdic- 
tion and exemption, which was accordingly done ; 
and in 1433, Eugenius IV. issued a bull to confirm 
the sentence of the delegates.* 

It would seem that this exemption finally re- 
lieved the university from the jurisdiction not only 
of the bishop of the diocese, but of the archbishop 
of the province. The Archbishop of Canterbury 
visited the university in 1309, the second or third 
of Edward II. ; and in the second of Henry IV. a.d. 
1401, the archbishop visited the university and the 
separate colleges. But these are the only exam- 
ples which we find of metropolitan visitation ;f and 

• See Dyer's Privil. vol. i. p. 445. 

-(* Mr. Dyer shows that the former of these visitations was 
undertaken by the authority of letters patent from the king 
the proceedings of the latter were confirmed by act of parlia- 
ment. Privil. vol. i. p. 468. Mr. Dyer's second English 
Dissertation, in vol. i. and the latter part of the Latin Disser- 
tation, in vol ii. are chiefly about the right of visitation. If 
we understand him rightly, he seems to hold, that the right 
of visitation and inspection resides in the king ; but that new 



UNIVERSITIES. 105 

in the reign of Edward VI. 1548 and 1549, the 
university was subjected to a very thorough royal 
visitation. 

There is not before us such ample information 
with regard to the collegiate foundations of Cam- 
bridge and other houses for the residence of stu- 
dents, as the Edinburgh reviewer found in Wood 
about those of Oxford. The hospitia, which were 
taxed according to the custom mentioned above, 
might in some cases be lodgings in the houses of 
the townspeople : there can be no doubt that this 
was the way of living in the earliest times ; but 
they were mostly separate houses, occupied only by 
students. In the composition between the scholars 
and the burgesses, sanctioned by royal authority in 
the fifty-fourth of Henry III., it was agreed that 
certain masters should be elected annually, who 
should keep a list of all principals and ever}' house, 
and all scholars dwelling in the said houses ; and an 
oath was to be exacted from the principals, that 
they would not knowingly receive in their hospitia 
any disturber of the public peace. This process 
implies that there was a large number of such 
hospitia with their principals, and that they were 
liable to fluctuation and change.* 

statutes can be given, or old ones abrogated, only by the 
supreme legislature. 

* Dyer's Privil. vol. i. p. 66, where the composition is 
given in full. The words domus and hospitium are both 



108 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

These elective chancellors held their office only 
for a short period; at Cambridge, for two years. 
The division of the scholars into nations, which 
prevailed in all the universities of the Continent, 
was unknown in England; probably because our 
insular situation prevented the influx of foreign 
students.* There was a tendency at one time at 
Oxford to establish a similar distinction between 
the natives of the counties north and south of 
Trent. For some time the proctors were chosen, 
one from each division ; but tlie schism was healed.f 
At Cambridge, by the composition between the 
scholars and the burgesses, in the fifty-fourth 
of Henry III. conservators of the peace were to 
be elected annually at the beginning of the aca- 
demical year, twenty-three in number (the original 
number of a jury), ten from the town, and thirteen 
from the university ; and of these latter, five were 
to be English, three Scotch, two Welsh, and three 
Irish. This arrangement might easily have given 
rise to a division of the scholars into nations, each 
choosing its own conservators ; but it was not at- 
tended by any such consequence. 

* We have noticed this division at Paris and Bologna. 
The Universities of Vicenza and Vercelli were each divided 
into four nations ; M ontpelier into three ; Orleans into ten ; 
Vienna into four ; and this was the most usual number. 

•f* Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. p. 407« The Irish students at one 
time were a marked body, and a turbulent one ; but they 
never attained any distinct privileges. 



UNIVERSITIES. 109 

The chief peculiarity, however, which distin- 
guished the English universities, was the early 
estahlishment of hostels, halls, and colleges, and 
the part which was taken by the principals or 
heads of these establishments in maintaining the 
discipline of the younger scholars. The prevalence 
of collegiate foundations has continued to affect 
them in every age, and their influence has con- 
tinually increased. Not only have the universities, 
like all other human institutions, settled in the 
course of time into an arrangement very different 
from their original form; but within a compara- 
tively short period they have departed from those 
bodies of statutes which were intended to per- 
petuate their legitimate constitution; and they 
have become unlike every other institution in 
Europe which bears the same name. J propose 
to trace these changes in the two lines in which 
they have developed themselves most prominently, 
— in the mode of communicating instruction, and in 
the internal government of the imiversities. 

It will be necessary, in the first place, to give a 
slight sketch of thpse changes which were wrought 
by the natural course of events in all the older 
universities, and to indicate the points in which 
later foundations differed from the ancient schools. 
The terms master and doctor, as we had repeat- 
edly occasion to caution the reader in the com- 
mencement of our dissertation, were not originally 



110 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

titles conferred by authority after a prescribed 
course of study or a formal examiuation, but were 
merely appellations given according to their com- 
mon meaning to persons engaged in teaching. 
The term professor, though less frequent in early 
times, had the same signification : it meant a 
person who professed to teach any particular sub- 
ject. In the Authentic of Frederic Barbarossa, so 
often mentioned, the teachers of law are called 
professors. When the teachers of different schools 
made regulations among themselves, which were 
subsequently confirmed by public authority, to 
prevent unqualified persons firom assuming their 
office; or when similar regulations were enforced 
by the ecclesiastical dignitaries who had the charge 
of such schools; the terms master, doctor, and 
professor, became titles, signifying a certain rank, 
and conveying certain powers in the scholastic 
body; but still they were given only to persons 
who were admitted by competent authority to the 
office of teachers. The appellations master and 
doctor were at first used synonymously; and it 
was only in process of time that the name master 
came to be restricted more peculiarly to the teach- 
ers of the liberal arts, and the title of doctor to be 
assumed as a distinction by the teachers of theo- 
logy and law, and subsequently of medicine.* We 
read of masters of theology at Paris, of masters of 

* Itter De Grad. Acad. c. ii. 8. 6, and elsewhere. 



UNlVBRSrriES. Ill 

law at Bologna,* of masters of medicine at Sa- 
lerno.f There is a letter addressed by Robert 
Grostest, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1237, '* Magistris 
Oxoniae in Theologia Regentibus :*'j: and in some 
universities the title of master of theology re- 
mained in use, as in those of Sweden.§ Master 
was a general title ; doctor, a special : all doctors 
were accounted masters, though all masters were 
not doctors. The phrase '< masters and scholars,'' 
is the general description, or corporate name, in 
which all members of the university are included, 
whether at Paris, or Oxford, or Cambridge. When 
the titles of doctor and master were distinguished, 
and more especially when an earlier stage in the 
probation was marked by the name of bachelor, 
these successive designations were called steps 
(gradus) or degrees. By a gradual change, which 
we shall presently trace more particularly, they 
ceased to imply actual teaching, and became at 
last mere titles of honour. 

The term professor has continued in common 
language to be applied only to those who are actu- 
ally engaged in teaching, or at least whose official 
duty it is to teach ; for the course of time has 
generated sinecure professorships. But that it was 

* In the Authentic, HabitOy and elsewhere, see above, p. 49. 
•f* See above, p. 67. 

4: Wood, Hist, et Antiq. lib. i. p. 24 ; in Itter, c. iv. s. 22. 
§ Itter. c. ii. 8S. 6, 7. 



112 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

originally synonymous with the other academical 
degrees appears clearly from this circumstance, that 
in our English universities (and possibly elsewhere) 
the Latin designation of a doctor of divinity is 
" sanctae theologise professor." The modern use of 
the word is so different, that Itter speaks of pro- 
fessors in the German universities, who had not 
attained to the degree of masters, or who had even 
not taken any degree at all.* 

A degree, therefore, originally was a licence to 
teach ; afterwards it implied an obligation to 
teach. Even the bachelor was obliged to give 
proof of his ability in teaching by reading a short 
course of lectures under the superintendence of his 
faculty.t The inceptor, or commencing master, 
began of course to teach. At Cambridge, for ex- 
ample, he had the last term of the academical year, 
before his full creation, to make his first experi- 
ment as an independent teacher. The technical 
term signifying to teach in the public schools was 
regere ; and the master of arts, or the doctor of 
any faculty, upon his creation, necessarily became 
a regent — that is, a teacher in the schools. This is 
the mode in which instruction was given in the 
earliest age of universities. Out of this number of 
rival teachers the students made their choice ; but 

* c. viii. s. 2 ; c. ix. s. 2. 

•j- Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. p. 388. See above the account of 
the University of Bologna, p. 61. 



<^ 



UNIVERSITIES. 113 



they were expected to attach themselves to some 
one in particular, as is implied in the Authmtk of 
Frederic I. and is expressly enacted in the Oxford 
statute of 1231, noticed above. Of course, it was 
not supposed that all who took degrees, and began 
to teach, would continue teaching all their lives ; 
and the more numerous they became, the less 
reason was there to prolong the obligation. A 
period, therefore, q^ 'necessary regency was generally 
established, different in different universities, during 
which the graduates were boiuid to teach, and 
after which they might, if they chose, become rum- 
regents. As the want of teachers was less felt, 
this period was shortened by successive enact- 
ments; and as many graduates were found who 
were willing to devote themselves to teaching as 
a profession, and to support themselves by the fees 
which all teachers might collect from their pupils, 
it became easy for those to whom the obligation 
of teaching was a burthen, to obtain a dispensation, 
even during the period of necessary regency. The 
students naturally preferred experienced teachers. 
We have seen how at Paris the lectures of the 
regent masters in the public schools were supplant- 
ed by the lectures of the regents permanently at- 
tached to the great colleges. At Bologna they 
were superseded by the lectures of the salaried 
professors. The change at Oxford and Cambridge 
appears to have proceeded more slowly. At Paris 



114 ON THB ORIGIN OF 

there was an impediment for want of room ; a diffi- 
culty in finding schools wherein the regents might 
lecture ; which was a cause of dispensations from 
the duty. Oxford was better provided in this 
respect in proportion to its numbers. It is said 
that forty sets of schools are still known by name, 
which were anciently open in School-street; and 
these were buildings each containing from four 
to sixteen lecture-rooms.* However, upon the 
establishment of public and salaried professors, the 
revolution took place in the English universities as 
well as in those of the Continent. At last, a tacit 
exemption was accorded to all who chose to avail 
themselves of it ; and a degree ceased in general 
to impose any obligation. Nevertheless, there was 
nothing to debar the regent from exercising his 
ancient function, and lecturing in the public schools. 
A lecturer might continue to teach as a voluntary 
regenty when his period of necessary regency had 
expired ; or he might resume his regency at plea- 
sure. At length some restrictions seem to have 
been imposed ; partly by the necessity of the 
case, partly from other motives. Thus, in Paris, 
the masters who were desirous of lecturing peti- 
tioned their faculty pro regentia et scholis ; and 

* Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. p. 388, note. How it may be at 
Oxford, I know not ; but Cambridge at this day has not 
public lecture-rooms sufficient for the professors who are de- 
sirous of lecturing. 



UNIVERSITIES. 115 

schools, as they fell vacant, were granted to them 
by their nations in order of seniority.* At Cam- 
bridge, on account of the express limitation of the 
period of regency, a non-regent master could not 
resume his regency without a grace of the senate ;t 
and it may be assumed that a similar regulation 
was in force at Oxford. At Cambridge the period 
of regency was limited to five years for masters, 
and to two years for doctors. The proctors and 
some other officers resume their regency by virtue 
of their office. At Oxford, the period of necessary 
regency was finally limited to one year; but the 
masters were allowed to remain voluntary regents 
(regents ad placitum) for two years. Now that 
the sole effect of regency is to make the master a 
member of the house of congregation, all remain 
regents for two years. The original signification 
of the term is so far preserved, that all professors 
and public lecturers, the masters of the schools, 
and public examiners, are regents. All resident 
doctors are regents — which was a usurpation of the 
title ; and so are all heads of houses, and the deans 
of colleges. 

Thus the early universities, in their earliest 
period, were taught by their graduates at large; 
and it was only by a slow change that this practice 
fell into disuse. The chief cause of its discon- 

• Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. p. 388, note. 
-f Stat. Eiiz. c yii. 



116 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

tinuance and final cessation was the general ap- 
pointment of public and authorized professors and 
lecturers. These were sometimes appointed by 
the government, sometimes by the university it^ 
self: sometimes they were elected annually ; some- 
times they held their offices at the pleasure of 
their faculty, sometimes for life : sometimes they 
were left, like other teachers, to collect fees from 
their pupils ; more commonly they received a fixed 
salary on condition of their teaching gratuitously : 
sometimes they were paid by the government; 
sometimes they owed their endowments to private 
munificence. But under some or other of these 
modifications this method of providing public 
teachers became general in all the universities of 
Europe. A detailed account of its introduction 
and establishment in the several universities would 
be a valuable chapter in academical history : but 
this, even if my limits would allow me, I have not 
the means of presenting. I have given a slight 
outline of its origin and progress at Paris and 
Bologna, and I shall mention presently the insti- 
tutions of our own universities. At this point it is 
more to our purpose to remark, that in those uni- 
versities which were founded by sovereigns and 
governments, after the first age of such institutions 
was gone by, the business of instruction was fi'om 
the beginning committed to a body of professors, 



UNIVERSITIES. 117 

as in almost all the universities of Germany ;* and 
in those of Scotland the case was much the same. 

So entirely was the right of teaching reserved to 
the regular and authorized professors in the German 
universities, that although in conferring degrees 
the ancient formula is retained, by which the gra- 
duate receives the power ^* legendij docendi, inter" 
pretandi, et ghsscmdi^** and of exercising all the 
functions of a professor, the German writers on 
academical law are careful to explain, that this is 
only a declaration of competence, not a licence to 
act; and that ^^promoti doctores facultatem ha- 
bent legendi, &c. si modo ad ejusmodi munus rite v(h 
centurJ" t 

However, in most of the German universities 
there are facilities by which a graduate who wishes 
it is enabled to lecture as an extraordinary or tem- 
porary professor. In this way teachers are exer- 
cised and trained to fill the regular chairs ; and the 
ordinary professors are not left to slumber in the 
secure possession of a monopoly. 

* The University of Gottingen is comparatively a recent 
institution ; but its form is a fair specimen of the general form 
of the Oerman universities. Its constitution will be found in 
the Pnvilegia Acad. Gotting. ; that is, the imperial and elec- 
toral ordinances to which it owes its existence, which are ap- 
pended to Heumann's edition of Conringius* Dissertations 
printed at Gottingen in 1739. 

j- See Itter and his authorities, cap. zvi. s. 6. 



118 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

The government of the ancient universities of the 
Parisian model was naturally vested in their teachers. 
"When regular degrees were conferred, it was the 
business of the regent masters. In the early state of 
the universities there was little inducement for non- 
regent graduates to remain resident in them, or to 
interfere in their concerns. In those universities 
in which, after a time, the growth of collegiate 
foundations, or other causes, induced graduates to 
reside who were not actually engaged in teaching, 
in the first place, the nominal regents, whose duty 
as public lecturers was dispensed with, still retained 
their powers as members of the governing body; 
an abuse, or at least a violation of ancient custom, 
which brought others in its train ; for, in the next 
place, all resident doctors, though not actually 
teaching, came Uo be considered as regents, and 
the same privilege was extended to all heads of 
colleges ; and, lastly, the resident non-regents, 
whose advice in ancient times was only requested 
on extraordinary occasions, came to take a part in 
the ordinary government of the university. On 
the other hand, in those universities in which the 
business of tuition fell into the hands of a body of 
authorized professors, and no motive was presented 
for the continued residence of other graduates, the 
government of the university fell likewise into the 
hands of the professors : and in the universities 
of later foundation, where the tuition is expressly 



UNIVERSITIES. 119 

and exclusively committed to the professors, the 
government also is entrusted to them ; and the 
supreme authority of the university is generally a 
Senatus Acad^micus, which is the united body of 
professors. 

At Oxford, some time before the present statutes 
were digested under the authority of Archbishop 
Laud, there were, besides the professors of the su- 
perior faculties, ten professors or public readers of 
the seven arts and the three philosophies. They 
were appointed by the house of congregation, that 
is, by the regents; and attendance on their lectures 
was enforced by statute. In the time of Laud, 
six of these enjoyed a permanent endowment : four 
were paid, partly by the fees of their pupils, partly 
by fines levied on the regents whom they relieved 
from teaching. After the final collection of the 
statutes, A.D. 1636, by which the university is still 
nominally governed, we find eleven professors or 
readers in the faculty of arts. They lectured on 
grammar, rhetoric, and logic, the three branches of 
the ancient trivium. Of the quadrivium, geometry 
and astronomy had their professors endowed by 
the munificence of Sir Henry Saville, in 1619. 
Provision was made by royal endowment for teach- 
ing the Greek and Hebrew languages: and there 
were also professors of natural and of moral philo- 
sophy, of metaphysics, and of history. Music had 
its professor ; but it was now separated from the 



120 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

faculty of arts. There were also two professors 
of divinity, a professor of civil law, a professor of 
medicine, and a praelector in anatomy, who minis- 
tered instruction in the higher faculties.* The re- 
gius professorships of Greek, Hebrew, divinity, 
civil law, and medicine, were endowed by Henry 
VIII. in the years 1535 and 1540. The Margaret 
professorship of divinity was of older date. 

Notwithstanding this array of professorships, 
which were now the chief instruments by which 
the university fulfilled its function as a teaching 
body, the right was expressly reserved by statute 
to every doctor and master of lecturing in the 
public schools on any subject pertaining to his 
faculty ; and the exercise of the right was still not 
unusual.t It is almost unnecessary to observe, 
that several professorships have been founded since 
the date of the statutes. 

At Cambridge, as far as we can gather from 
Dyer's Privileges of the University, the earliest 
professorship which appears upon record is the 
professorship of divinity, founded by Lady Margaret 
Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. aj). 
1502. The professor was to be elected by the 
vice-chancellor and the graduates in divinity, and 
to hold his office two years. In 1524, Sir Robert 

* Edioburgh Rev. No. cvi. pp. 389-391. 
*f* Corp. Stat. t. iv. s. 1 ; in Edinb. Rev. p. 392. See also 
p. 390. 



UNIVERSITIES. 121 

Read made an endowment for three lecturers, who 
are called " the three readers of ordinaries" and 
who were " to read the accustomed lectures in hu- 
manity (rhetoric), logic, and philosophy.** These 
readers were to be elected annually,* and were " to 
be chosen after the laudable custom and usage of 
the university.** Whether there were public read- 
ers appointed by the university before this time, 
and these words refer specially to the way in 
which they were elected, or whether they refer 
to the general mode of electing the officers of the 
university, does not clearly appear. The inten- 
tion of the founder was to secure gratuitous in- 
struction to the students, and he clogged his 
foundation with the condition that '^no money 
was to be paid for ordinaries for the future;** 
but as the endowment for each reader was four 
pounds per annum, the offices in no long space of 
time were made sinecures. The same has been 
the fate of a lectureship on mathematics, which was 
soon after added to the foundation. However, in 
Queen Elizabeth's statutes we find these four lec- 
turers recognised as the regular and efficient in- 
structors of the students of arts.f 

In 1535, when Thomas Cromwell, the king's 

* They are chosen on the 10th of June, the day before St. 
Barnabas* day, and hence are commonly called the Bamaby 
lecturers. 

'I* Stat. c. iii. See also c. vi. 



122 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

commissioner for visiting all ecclesiastical establish- 
ments, was chancellor of the university, the univer- 
sity was directed by a royal injunction to found a 
Greek and Latin lecture at its own expense. The 
Latin lectureship became extinct, — probably from 
the want of an endowment. But in 1540 the king 
endowed the regius professorships of Greek and 
Hebrew, of theology^ civil law, and medicine, as at 
Oxford. The original endowment of these profes- 
sorships was 40/. per annum, and the stipend of 
the Greek and Hebrew professors has never been 
in any way augmented. These are all the profes- 
sorships which are recognised in the Elizabethan 
statutes. The more bountiful provision of public 
lecturers at Oxford was no doubt the cause of the 
greater abbreviation of the period of regency. It 
would seem that at Cambridge the lectures of the 
regent masters must have been almost necessary to 
the efficiency of the university. As there was not 
more than one professor of any one subject except 
divinity, and as it was expressly enacted by the sta- 
tutes that all lectures on one and the same branch of 
learning should be delivered at one and the same 
hour,* it follows that there were other lectures be- 
sides those of the professors ; and that these were 
not college lectures appears from another statute to 
be mentioned presently. 

At the time, therefore, when the universities 

* Stat. Eliz. c. iv. in fine. 



UNIVERSITIES. 123 

received their respective statutes, and when the 
authority of the crown was last exerted in regulat- 
ing their general system, the instruction which 
they afforded was as wide or wider in its range 
than it had ever been before, (except that lectures 
and degrees in the canon law were prohibited after 
the Reformation,) and in their method of commu- 
nicating it they had not departed from the ancient 
customs of universities further than the other great 
academies of Europe. At Cambridge the profes- 
sors were all strictly bound to lecture at least four 
times a week ;* and the same had been the custom 
at Oxford, or even daily lectures were required, 
till the time of Laud's statutes, which demanded 
lectures only twice a weeLf This relaxation was 
a symptom of the change which was approaching^ 
As yet, however, at both universities, heavy pecu- 
niary penalties were exacted for any negligence, 
whether of teachers or pupils. For every separate 
degree a continued residence in the university was 
required, an assiduous attendance on the lectures 
pertaining to the faculty, and a scrupulous per- 
formance of the public acts or disputations, which 
were still esteemed the most effectual means of 
proving the attainments of the candidates, and 
the most beneficial mode of guiding the studies 
of others engaged in the same course, whose 

* Stat. c. iii. 

t Edinb. Rev. No. cvi. pp. 391, 392. 



124 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

presence at the disputations the statutes rigidly 
enforced. Thus, at Oxford, not only were the 
courses of lectures strictly determined, which the 
scholar was to attend in each of the four years, be- 
fore he could be admitted as a bachelor of ar^; 
but the lectures to be attended in each of the three 
succeeding years, before he could proceed to the 
degree of master of arts, were prescribed with equal 
precision.* At Cambridge, the course of the first 
four years was traced out in like manner. The 
lectures to be attended by bachelors of arts are also 
specified, but not the order of attendance. More- 
over, five public disputations are required, and 
attendance on all the disputations of the masters.t 
The lectures to be attended, and the exercises to 
be performed, by candidates for degrees in the 
superior faculties, are prescribed with the same 
rigour. The Cambridge statute, with regard to 
masters of arts who are proceeding to the degree 
of bachelor of divinity, will serve as a specimen. 
^< A master of arts shall be a sedulous hearer of 
theology, and a daily hearer of the Hebrew lec- 
ture; to which subjects he shall apply himself 
seven years : in which time he shall dispute twice 
against a bachelor of theology; once afler his 
fourth year he shall respond in theology ; he shall 
preach in the university church once in Latin and 
once in English .... And if in this time he shall have 
* £dinb. Rev. p. 391. "f Stat.£liz. oc vi. vii. 



UNIVERSITIES. 125 

profited in theolc^, afler seven years complete, 
and not before, let him become a bachelor by solemn 
inauguration."* It might seem superfluous to ob- 
serve, that daily or sedulous attendance upon lec- 
tures implied residence in the university, if it were 
not for the ingenuity which the universities have 
shown in interpreting their statutes. 

The revolution which has taken place at Oxford 
we shall describe in the words of the Edinburgh Re- 
viewer. This description comes from an unfavour- 
able observer; and I should be glad to separate 
the statement of facts from the tone of accusation 
in which it is conveyed, and in which I am by 
no means disposed altogether to concur. But I 
think it safer on the whole to borrow this account, 
after guarding it by this preface, than to run the 
risk of the errors which might be committed, even 
in interpreting evidence, by one who has not been 
a resident in the university. 

" The university is in abeyance. In none of the 
faculties is it supposed that the professors any 
longer furnish the instruction necessary for a de- 
gree. Some chairs are even nominally extinct, 
where an endowment has not perpetuated the 
sinecure ; and the others betray, in general, their 
existence only through the calendar. If the silence 
of the schools be occasionally broken by a formal 

* Stat. Eliz. cap. viii. With regard to Oxford, see Edinb. 
Rev. as before mentioned. 



126 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

lecture, or if on some popular subjects (fees being 
now permitted) a short course be usually delivered, 
attendance on these is not more required or ex- 
pected than attendance in the music-room. For 
every degree in every faculty above bachelor of 
arts, standing on the books is allowed to count for 
residence in the university and attendance on the 
public courses; and though under these circum- 
stances examinations be more imperatively neces- 
sary, a real examination only exists for the elemen- 
tary degree, of which residence is also a condition. 
It is thus not even pretended that Oxford now sup- 
plies more than the preliminary of an academical 
education. Even this is not afforded by the uni- 
versity> but abandoned to the colleges and halls.'* * 
This description is true, in a great measure, of 
Cambridge also ; but there the collapse of the uni- 
versity has not been so deathlike. The picture 
would have been more like some few years ago ; 
but recently a spirit of life and activity has been 
roused in the university. More than one professor, 
whose chair had been suffered to become silent, 
has broken through the prescriptive example of his 
predecessors ; and others, placed in stations in 
which some formal and ceremonial duties were still 
performed, have exerted themselves to make their 
offices efficient. Nevertheless, with two or three 
exceptions, it is generally true, that the professors 
* Edinb. Rev. for June 1831, No. cvi. pp. 393, 394. 



UNIVERSITIES. 127 

who lecture most zealously are not the professors 
of subjects included in the ancient and regular 
studies of the university, but of branches of learn- 
ing or science of more recent growth* Attendance 
on their lectures is in no way required, nor does 
the university take cognizance of it. The regular 
and substantial education is supposed to be given 
in the colleges by the college tutors and lecturers ; 
and the instruction which is gathered from the 
professors is regarded as an ornamental addition. 
The most popular professors are chiefly attended by 
those who are characterised as non-reading men. 

If we descend to particulars, we shall find that 
in the faculty of arts residence is not required after 
the degree of bachelor. For proceeding to a higher 
degree, it is not even necessary, as at Oxford, for 
the bachelor to keep his name upon the books. 
He may take it off, and put it on again shortly 
before he presents himself for his master's degree. 
For this degree there is no examination whatso- 
ever ; and the public disputations are reduced to 
a mere empty form, which in most cases is omitted 
with impunity. 

If we look to the faculty of theology, we find 
that the two degrees in arts are required as preli- 
minary to a degree in theology, according to the 
statutes ; but no attendance upon lectures nor any 
further residence is demanded ; so that a person 
may become a doctor of divinity who has spent 



128 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

but a few days in the university since he was ad- 
mitted as a bachelor of arts. For some years 
past, the two ancient professors of divinity have 
not lectured regularly. The Lady Margaret's pro- 
fessor, when his age enabled him to perform in any 
way the duties of his office, made occasional and 
rare sermons in the university church a substitute 
for the lectures required by his foundation. The late 
regius professor of divinity, the very learned Bishop 
of Lincoln, delivered two most judicious courses of 
lectures on the writings of some of the ancient 
fathers of the church : but neither he nor any other 
person in the university dreamed that attendance 
on these lectures was necessary for a candidate for 
theological degrees. A professor on a more recent 
foundation, the Norrisian professor of divinity, de- 
livers a regular course of lectures every year ; but 
attendance on these is required, not by the univer- 
sity, but by the bishops, who generally make it a 
condition of ordination. They are most frequently 
attended by under-graduates in their second or 
third year, or by bachelors of arts, and stand in no 
relation to the theological degrees. The present 
Professor of Hebrew lectures regularly and zea- 
lously, and in consequence of the foundation of 
Hebrew scholarships, is able to collect a small class: 
but these lectures also have now no connexion with 
degrees in theology. The late professor of Hebrew 
never came near the university. The sermons 



UNIYERSITIES. 129 

required from aspirants in theology are duly de- 
livered. The public exercises or disputations have 
become little more than a ceremony ; but it is a 
ceremony performed gravely and decorously. They 
are made an efficient instrument of examination 
only in the case of a particular class of candidates, 
who, being twenty-four years of age and already in 
holy orders when they enter the university, are en» 
abled by Elizabeth's statutes to proceed to the 
degree of bachelor of divinity without taking de- 
grees in arts ; and from whom, by the prevalent 
abuse in interpreting the statutes, residence is re- 
quired only for one year, although their names 
must stand on the books for ten. Even these less 
favoured candidates find the examination not very 
searching. 

In civil law and in medicine no residence is re- 
quired for the doctor's degree: a bachelor pro- 
ceeds to the doctorate at the proper time as a 
matter of course. No residence is required for the 
bachelor's degree, if the student be already a ba- 
chelor of arts ; but if he desire a degree in either 
of these faculties without proceeding through arts, 
residence is required, not for the period determined 
by statute, viz. six years, but for half the time. 

The statute requires from students of civil law 
an attendance of five years upon the lectures of the 
professor. How entirely the statutes, and the 
course of study which they direct, had fallen into 



JdO ON THE ORIGIN OF 

disuse, may be estimated from this circumstance, 
that in 1768 the senate found it necessary to en- 
act, tliat no one should be admitted to the degree 
of B.C.L. without producing a certificate of his 
having attended the lectures in civil law for three 
terms, that is, for one year. Not many years ago 
the nominal study of law was frequently chosen, as 
the easiest mode of obtaining a degree, by students 
whose reasoning powers did not enable them to un- 
dergo the examination in arts. The present pro- 
fessor has laboured to do away this kind of prefer- 
ence for his faculty, and besides exacting a regular 
attendance upon his lectures, and a strict perform- 
ance of the public disputations, he has instituted 
an examination of the candidates, and added the 
stimulus of a classification in the order of merit 
But I apprehend that even the learned professor 
himself would admit that his pupils do not attain to 
a knowledge of more than the elements of his science. 
In the faculty of medicine an annual course of 
lectures is delivered by the regius professor, attend- 
ance on which is required from all candidates for 
the degree of bachelor of medicine. It is true 
that the statutes require attendance for six years, 
whereas the university is now content with one ; 
but, as the calendar gravely informs us that " the 
present professor has instituted a course of lectures 
on the principles of pathology and the practice of 
physic," we may guess that the condition of the 



UNIVERSITIES. 131 

faculty is much improved under his auspices. The 
professor likewise examines the candidates. They 
are required to produce certificates of examination 
by the professors of anatomy, chemistry, and bo- 
tany ; and they are required to attend the lectures 
of these professors, provided they deliver courses 
of a certain length : but the university does not 
enforce the delivery of these courses, but leaves 
this important point to the discretion of the pro- 
fessors. The present professors have exerted 
themselves most zealously and most honourably 
to give every possible advantage to the medical 
students ; and I believe that the medical school 
of Cambridge is as efficient a school as could be 
formed in a town of moderate size, and with a very 
small number of pupils. The professors have not 
necessarily an official connexion with the hospital ; 
but the present regius professor is a physician of 
the hospital, and delivers some clinical lectures. 

It appears, therefore, that in every faculty the 
course of real study terminates with the first de- 
gree ; and that the academical studies of the gra- 
duate in theology terminate with his first degree 
in arts, if he have proceeded by the regular and 
usual course. The number of graduates in civil 
law and medicine is very small in comparison with 
the number of graduates in arts. It follows that 
the education which is afforded within the pre- 
cincts of the university is almost entirely a prepa- 



132 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

ration, either for the degree of bachelor of arts, or 
for certain prizes and distinctions offered to the 
competition of undergraduates or commencing ba- 
chelors. 

Of the two examinations through which the 
student must pass before he can attain the degree 
of B.A. the previous examination requires a very 
moderate amount of classical knowledge, an ac- 
quaintance with one of the historical books of the 
New Testament in the original language, and with 
Paley's Evidences of Christianity. In the final 
examination, those who do not aspire to honours 
are examined in Homer and Virgil, in Paley's 
Evidences and Moral Philosophy, in Locke's Essay 
on the Human Understanding, and in the elements 
of mathematics. The candidates for honours un- 
dergo an examination, which is in reality exclu- 
sively mathematical, although one day is nominally 
assigned to metaphysical subjects. The prizes 
and distinctions, the examinations for which are 
not compulsory, are for the most part to be at- 
tained by superiority in classical knowledge. 

The university performs the function of exa- 
miner. The examinations are careful, strict, and 
perfectly impartial; and they are conducted in a 
very judicious manner. The highest honours con- 
ferred are tests of very high attainments ; and the 
standard of the ordinary degrees has been con- 
siderably raised within a few years. 



UNIVERSITIES. 133 

But this is the only function which is fulfilled 
by the university. Of course the examinations of 
the university determine the general direction of 
the studies of the place, and the extent to which 
they are carried. In many of these (though not in 
the examinations for the first degree in arts) cer- 
tain professors examine by virtue of their office ; 
but the imiversity does not by its proper organs, 
professors or other public lecturers, afibrd the in- 
struction by which students are prepared to en- 
counter these examinations. This office, the office 
for which the university was originally established, 
it has almost entirely resigned ; and the business 
of education is devolved upon the tutors of the 
several colleges. It is true that the present pro- 
fessor of Greek has lectured annually, and his 
course is generally attended by students who aspire 
to classical honours ; but, in the first place, his lec- 
tures are not a means of preparation for any com- 
pulsory examination of tlie university ; and, in the 
second place, attendance upon them is entirely 
voluntary, and the university takes no cognizance 
of it. The lectures of the Plumian professor of 
astronomy and experimental philosophy are attend- 
ed by those who are ambitious of the highest ma- 
thematical honours, as well as by gentlemen who 
have already graduated, and who are engaged in 
scientific investigations. With these exceptions, 
the instruction which the academic youth receive 



134 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

is given by the college tutors and lecturers. It 
seems to have been always the duty of the college 
tutor to instruct his pupils; but in former times 
this instruction was merely subservient to the 
public teaching of the professors of the university. 
The professor carried forward his hearers in a 
general and regular course ; the tutor explained 
the particular difficulties which occurred to indi- 
viduals : his tuition, in short, was domestic and 
private. How little it was intended that this do- 
mestic tuition should be vicarious of the public 
instruction of the professors, may be seen from the 
statute which strictly forbids any domestic or 
college lectures being given at the same hours as 
the public lectures of the university. 

It is true that the college tutors are generally 
competent teachers, and sometimes very eminent 
men. As the reputation of a college depends upon 
the reputation of its tutors, it follows, at least 
of late years, that the most able men that the 
college can furnish are appointed to the office. 
The larger colleges are not likely to be at a loss 
for able tutors ; and in the smaller colleges it happens 
not unfrequently, that if the college cannot supply 
a person of sufficient eminence and ability, a gen- 
tleman from another college is invited to assume 
the office. It might be argued that these tutors 
only exercise the function which in old times was 
open to every regent : but they do not adequately 




supply the place of public professors, or even of the 
regents of the early age. In the iirst place, their 
appointmeot is private, and depends solely upoQ 
the pleasure of the master of tlie college. They 
do not therefore carry with them the warrant which 
is attached to the character of a professor appointed 
by the common voice of the university. It is true 
that the masters generally appoint the most able 
members of their college; but this has not always 
been the case, and private partiaiity or prejudice 
may operate without public question ; and besides, 
the field of choice is limited. The colleges which 
sometimes find it necessary to look for tutors be- 
yond their own body, are not those which can offer 
high inducements to strangers. In the second 
place, the lectures of the college tutors are not pub- 
lic, but confined to tlie members of their own college. 
In colleges of which the superintendence is divided 
between two or more tutors, a pupil entered on one 
ode cannot even attend the lectures of the tutor 
of the other side. The tutors and college lecturers 
therefore are not exposed to the observation of any 
except of those over whom they exercise the fullest 
The attendance, likewise, is not 
IS to produce upon the pupils the 
stirring effect of a public lecture. In the great 
colleges. Trinity and St. John's, the numbers as- 
sembled in one lecture-room are perhaps sufficiently 
large to excite an honourable emulation among the 



official autliority. 
sufficiently 



136 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

pupils, and to enable them to judge with tolerable 
correctness of their own relative proficiency ; but 
the numbers might be much greater without detri- 
ment to the individuals : and in the smaller colleges 
it would be a very great benefit to the pupils, as well 
as a saving of labour to their teachers, if the pupils 
of several colleges were collected in the room of 
one professor. If, as I have ventured to suggest, 
the ancient halls should be revived, it will be a 
necessary consequence that the business of instruc- 
tion must be resumed by the public organs of the 
university. 

But the method of instruction at Cambridge has 
undergone another change, and a system has been 
silently and gradually introduced, which has in 
some measure supplanted the college tuition, as the 
college tuition supplanted the professorial instruc- 
tion. The students very generally seek instruction 
from private tutors, selected and paid by themselves. 
This mode of private instruction is supposed to be, 
and in many cases really is, subsidiary to the college 
lectures : but not unfrequently a student is diligent 
in his attendance on his private tutor, who is irre- 
gular in his attendance in the lecture-room. Where 
these private tutors receive several pupils of the 
same standing, and collect them at one time, and 
examine them together, they bear no distant analogy 
to the primitive teachers of universities in what 
may be called their vohmtary stage, before they 



UNIVERSITIES. 137 

received their organization and form ; and the 
method of instruction appears to have revolved 
through a cycle, and returned to the point from 
which it started. Where private tuition is gene- 
rally preferred, it may be presumed that there is 
some defect in the public instruction ; but in Cam- 
bridge this defect in general arises, not so much 
from the insufficiency of the teachers, as from a 
difficulty inherent in the very nature of mathe- 
matical reasoning, which is the main study of the 
place — the difficulty of carrying forward a large 
number of pupils at once, where the omission of 
any one step by an individual is an impediment to 
his particular progress. 

I believe that the University of Oxford has ex- 
perienced but few symptoms of that revival which 
has been manifested at Cambridge ; but even if we 
suppose the universities to be equally active, it is 
clear that in the business of education both have in 
a great measure foregone their proper functions, and 
departed widely from their legal constitution, and that 
the nature of this change has been mainly determined 
by the collegiate foundations. We should take too 
limited a view of their influence, if we said merely 
that the instruction in the faculty of arts had passed 
into the hands of the tutors. Though the neglect of 
the peculiar education designed in the higher facul- 
ties has arisen in a great measure from the altered 
circumstances of society, yet much, no doubt, is to 



138 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

be attributed to the habits of the student in his 
earlier academical years, which lead him to regard 
the public professorships as parts of an obsolete 
institution, and to look for no instruction beyond 
the walls of his college. 

The collegiate foundations have likewise modified 
the government of the universities. Their chief ef- 
fect is operated in precisely the same manner in both 
Oxford and Cambridge. Their ample endowments, 
and the conveniences which they minister to those 
who have the right and the inclination to profit by 
them, retain many graduates in residence who are 
neither actually nor nominally engaged in the du- 
ties of academical instruction. But these graduates 
have not renounced their right to take part in the 
government of the university. In the ancient form 
of universities, when the graduates were the teachers, 
the power which was naturally vested in the teach- 
ers was vested in the graduates. In universities of 
more recent foundation, in which there are no endow- 
ments to perpetuate the residence of graduates who 
discharge no function in the academical body, the 
professors who are the teachers are also the go- 
vernors. In Oxford and Cambridge the professors 
have never, as such, possessed any power beyond 
other graduates. 

In Cambridge the colleges have not in any more 
direct way modified the legislative power of the 
university. The senate is composed of two houses, 



nUIVERSmEB. 

the regent and the non-regent house, the qualifies 
tiona for which have been already mentioned. I 
is to be observed, with reference to the superiority 
enjoyed in old times by the regents or actual 
teachers, that the regent house, although it h 
posed of junior members, is called the upper house. 
Any member of the senate may propose a grace for 
enactment. The proposition is submitted 6rEt to 
thecapvt — a select council of six members including 
the vice-chancellor, any one of whom can stop any 
measure, — and then to the non-regent and regent 
house in order. As every person is held to be a 
member of the university who keeps his name 
upon the college books, graduates who are not 
resident may come to give their votes on special 
occasions. This is certainly an abuse of the let- 
ter of ancient institutions ; and such interference 
in the ordinary business of the university is an 
usurpation on the part of the non-resident gra- 
duates. On occasions of public and pohtical in- 
terest, such as the election of members of parlia- 
ment, when it is desirable to ascertain the i 
ments of the greatest number of educated j 
tfaat can be collected, the concourse of non-resi- 
dents may be viewed in a different light. 

The influence of the colleges is more visible in 
the appointment of the executive authorities of the 
university. The office of vice-chancellor was an- 
ciently open to all graduates of a certain standing ; 



I 

I 



^ 




140 ON THE ORIGIN OP 

but, by a reguladon of 1587, the yice-chancellor 
must be the head of a coU^e, and succession ac- 
cording to a regular cycle has been substituted for 
the ancient mode of appointment by election. The 
proctors anciently were elected by the regents; 
but now, by statute, they are nominated by the 
colleges in turn. The aqnU^ the singular powers 
of which we have noticed, is nominally elected by 
the heads of colleges and doctors from three lists 
submitted by the vice-chancellor and the two 
proctors ; but in practice the list of the vice-chan- 
cellor is generally adopted. The heads have also 
great power in the appointment of several pro- 
fessors, either by immediate election, or by pre- 
vious nomination. When summoned by the vice- 
chancellor, they constitute a court of discipline, 
— an office which is more within their proper 
functions. 

The constitution of Oxford has been much more 
completely changed by the undue preponderance 
of the collegiate foundations. The house of con- 
gregation is composed of the regents — (the Ox- 
ford qualifications for regency have been described 
above, p. 115); the house of convocation, of the 
regents and non-regents together. Anciently all 
business was submitted for the previous discussion 
of the house of congregation; and measures ap- 
proved there, were then laid before the house of 
convocation. This free and salutary constitution 



UNIVERSITIES. 141 

was broken up by the Earl of Leicester, who com- 
pelled the regents to surrender their right of pre- 
vious discussion, and transferred it to what would 
seem a more venerable body, composed of the 
vice-chancellor, the proctors, the heads of houses, 
and all doctors ;* thus excluding, together with the 
youthful regents, the professors and public lec- 
turers of the university. Laud excluded the doc- 
tors, and constituted the hebdomadal meeting of 
the vice-chancellor and other heads of colleges and 
halls, and of the two proctors. This body meets 
weekly, as its name implies ; and from possessing 
the right of previous deliberation upon all business 
to be submitted to the university, it has in fact 
usurped the initiative power, and no measure is 
proposed to the university which does not emanate 
from the hebdomadal meeting. All its propositions 
are promulgated, according to ancient form, in the 
house of congregation ; but the acceptance or re- 
jection of them depends upon the votes of the 
house of convocation. Nothing is left to the dis- 
posal of the house of congregation but the routine 
business of passing dispensations and conferring 
degrees. The vice-chancellor singly, and the two 
proctors jointly, possess a prohibitive voice upon 
all measures ; but the constitution of the hebdo- 
madal meeting has made this [urerogative obsolete.f 
The power of the colleges in the appointment of 

* Wood, An. 1569. f ^^in. Rev. No. cvi. pp. 413, 414. 



142 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

the officers and dignitaries of the university is 
much the same as at Cambridge. 

It will be observed that I have made frequent 
use of the authority of the writer of a learned 
article in the Edinburgh Review for June 1831, on 
the Universities of England, and specially on Ox- 
ford ; but I trust that it will be observed also 
that we are actuated by very different motives. 
The writer in the Review denounces every de- 
parture of the university from its statutable form 
as a corruption and abuse, and stigmatizes the col- 
legiate heads, under whose influence the change 
which he describes was gradually wrought, with 
the guilt of perjury, fraud, and wilful betrayal 
of trust. I, on the other hand, am willing to 
admit that much of the change is due to the 
altered circiunstances of society, and was operated 
by a force to which the universities might have 
yielded in a different way, but which they could 
not altogether resist: and though in some points 
I should be glad to see their ancient constitution 
restored, with such modifications only as the state 
of society may manifestly require, yet in other 
points, and especially in the examinations for the 
first degree, it is impossible to deny that most 
essential and vital improvements have been effect- 
ed. And least . of all do I desire to sit in judg- 
ment upon those under whose authority the re- 
volution was effected. My purpose is altoge- 



mnVERSlTIBS. 



143 



ther different. I wish merely to show that the 
English univerBities in their present state are very 
different from their original form — very differ- 
ent from the form in which they were ultimately 
established by their statutes — and very different 
from all other universities in Europe; and hence 
to refute the argument which has been too hastily 
drawn, that the University of London Ib not 
composed of the essential elements of a university, 
and is not of the form of a legitimate university, 
merely because it differs from the present form of 
Oxford and Cambridge. 

If I am not mistaken, it appears from the fore- 
going sketch, that the University of London, in its 
actual state, as a voluntary association of teachers 
and learners, with its plan of self-government and 
internal discipline, is a counterpart of the most 
ancient universities in their early stage ; and 
that it differs from them only in this point, that 
whereas the teachers of the early universities were 
obliged to find for themselves such scanty and in- 
sufficient accommodation as they could, for the 
University of London a spacious and convenient 
building (besides libraries and museums) has been 
provided by the munificence of founders, who retain 
a voice in the disposal of its property. Even if of 
its own authority it should confer titles of honour 
nn its successful students, it would only be follow- 
ing the example of the earliest universities ; and it 



I 



144 ON THB ORIGIN OP 

might trust to their bong at length umilarlj r&> 
cogoixed by society and the state. But if it should 
be incorporated by puUic authority, and its tuition 
and discipline legaUy committed to the body of 
professors, it would then resemble in aU its most 
important features the universities of Scotland and 
Germany, and those of Italy in their present form. 
The only point in which it would differ from simi* 
lar institutions is this, — that in other cases, where an 
endowment has been bestowed by the private mu^ 
nificence of princes or nobles, a power oi visitation 
and control has been reserved to the founders and 
their heirs for ever : in the University of Liondon a 
similar power is vested in a numerous body, who, 
although they are called proprietors, are in reality 
the founders and endowers of this seat of learning. 

The reader who is conversant only with Oxford 
and Cambridge will be able to form a more compre- 
hensive notion of academical establishments, if he 
will consider the origin and changes and actual 
state of the Scottish universities. With regard to 
these we have full information in the Report of the 
Royal Commission of Enquiry into the State of the 
Universities of Scotland, printed by order of the 
House of Commons in 1831. 

In the three most ancient places of study, St. 
Andrew's, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, the original 
universities have been superseded by colleges. 
But there is a very great difference between the 



original foundations of these colleges and those of 
the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, and a very 
great difference in their operation upon t' 
sities. In England, the college endowments pro- 
vided for the maintenance of a number of gradu- 
ates, under the name of fellows, who were not in 
any way engaged in the public teaching of the 
university. It was indeed the general i 
the founders that the fellowships should be a pro- 
vision for students in theology— or, ii 
in the other faculties ; but as they were tenable for 
life, the majority of the fellows at all times must 
have ceased to be students ; and as the statutes 
are satisfied by the fellows' entering into holy 
orders, or proceeding to a higher degree, which 
has long become a mere formality, none of them 
now can be considered as students. In the univer- 
sity, therefore, they are, as fellows, neither teachers 
nor learners. The tuition within the colleges was 
originally domestic or private, and not of the same 
kind as the public teaching of the university pro- 
fessors ; and now that it has approached more 
nearly to it in kind, it is still restricted in each case 
to the members of the particular college. Each 
college and hall, of the twenty-four at Oxford and 
the seventeen at Cambridge, has separately supplant- 
ed the university, so far as the education of its own 
pupils is concerned. In the Scottish universities, 
the colleges were endowed for the habitation and 



146 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

maintenance of r^ents or professors, who taught 
the university at large. There were in all cases en- 
dowments for a small number of poor scholars, stu- 
dents in arts and philosophy; and sometimes for a few 
graduates in arts, who were students of theology. 
But these latter endowments could be held only 
for a short period, so that they never assumed the 
character of the English fellowships ; and the only 
permanent and governing members of the colleges 
were the regents or professors. From the small 
number and the general poverty of the students 
who resorted to the universities, the ordinary gra- 
duates, who might, as in other universities, have 
lectured and taken fees from their pupils, found 
little temptation to engage in so unprofitable an 
employment ; and the whole business of teaching 
and the government of the students were speedily 
left in the hands of the salaried professors of the 
colleges. Indeed, in each university it seems to 
have been felt almost from the beginning that a 
stipend was necessary to secure teachers ; and this 
was the chief motive for the collegiate foundations. 
Thus, at Oxford and Cambridge, establishments 
different from the university have stepped into the 
place of the university. In Scotland, certain parts 
of the university have become the whole university 
by the voluntary renunciation and disappearance 
of the rest. The consequence is, that in modern 
times, and for many years past, the distinction be- 



UNIVERSITIES. 



obliterated ^^M 
■e used sy- ^H 



tfreen university and college has been 
and almost forgotten, and the words are used sy- 
nonymously even in public documents. The royal 
com mission era, although they are aware of the 
difference, and in many passages of their report 
draw the distinction rightly, yet in other passages 
not only confound the terms, but have been be- 
trayed into the vulgar confusion of ideas. This 
renders their sketches of the early history of these 
institutions somewhat less clear than they might 
have been ; but vre shall be able to present such a 
brief view as is necessary for our purpose. 

The University of St. Andrew's was founded by 
Henry Wardlaw, bishop of the diocese, in 1411. 
The king, James I. of Scotland, the bishop, and the 
heads of the Augustinian priory at St. Andrew's, 
requested the papal sanction ; and accordingly a 
bull was issued in 1413, by Benedict XIII. by 
which it was made a university, and a general 
study for all the faculties. It received otlier bene- 
factions from the church, which were ratified by 
the Icing in 14S3 ; and he at the same time granted 
to all its members an exemption from taxes,^a 
privilege confirmed by his successors. 

The bishop of the see was always chancellor of 
the university. All the members, whether students 
or graduates, were distributed into four nations. 
The rector of the university was chosen by the 
votes of the nations: probably in old times he 



I 



148 ON THB ORIGIN OF 

was elected immediately by them. According to 
the present custom, each nation elects an intrant ; 
and these intrants are not merely the vehicles of 
the votes oi the nations, as at Glasgow, but inde- 
pendent electors ; and if the votes of the intrants 
be equally divided, the preceding rector has a 
casting vote. The office of rector by the foun- 
dation charter was open to all graduates. By 
subsequent statute, there are only four persons 
eligible. The rector, with the advice of his 
assessors, now nominated by himself, is still the 
supreme authority of the university, and over the 
students has the power of expulsion. There is a 
dean of the faculty of arts, the only faculty which 
in early times flourished in the university. We 
may conclude by analogy that he was originally 
elected by all the graduates of arts. He is now 
elected annually by the principal and professors of 
the united college. 

The University of St, Andrew's suflPered great 
inconvenience during the first twenty years of its 
existence from the want of public buildings; and 
its schools were held in the religious houses. In 
1430, a pcedagogium was built for the schools of 
the faculties of arts, and even, it is said, for cham- 
bers for students of that faculty ; but the schools 
of the faculties of theology and law were provided 
as before. The congregations of the university 



UNIVERSITIES. 149 

were held for at least one hundred and thirty years 
in the Augustinian priory.* 

James Kennedy, bishop of the see, founded the 
college of St. Salvator, which was confirmed by the 
king, and by the Popes Nicolas V. and Pius II. in 
1455 and 1458. It was endowed for three gra- 
duates in theology; a inaster in theology, who was 
to be provost ; a licentiate, and a bachelor, each of 
whom was to lecture ; four clerical masters of arts, 
two of whom were to be annually nominated by 
the theological professors as regents or lecturers ; 
and six poor scholars, students of philosophy. The 
provost or principal had the chief authority within 
the college ; but the rector of the university was 
its official visitor, and, with the advice of his four 
assessors, might correct all abuses, whether in the 
head or the members. About 1468, Pope Paul II. 
granted by bull to the college the power of confer* 
ring degrees in theology and arts ; and by this 
anomalous grant erected, in fact, a university within 
the university. 

In 1512, Alexander Stuart, archbishop of St 
Andrew's, and John Hepburn, prior of the cathe- 
dral, founded St. Leonard's college, which was 
confirmed by royal charter. It was endowed for 
a principal master, who was always to be nomi- 
nated by the prior out of the canons of the chapter, 

* Report, p. 214. 



150 ON THB ORIGIN OF 

and who was to be the professor of divinity; for 
four chaplains, two of whom were to be regents, 
as at St. Salvator's; six graduates of arts, who 
were to be diligent students of theology ; and 
twenty scholars, students of philosophy. All elec- 
tions were reserved to the principal and the prior ; 
and a commission of annual visitation was ap- 
pointed. 

St Mary's college was founded in 1587, by Arch- 
bishop James Beatoun, and confirmed by Paul III. 
It was founded for all the faculties, and empowered 
to confer degrees in them; thus presenting the 
same anomaly as St Salvator's. In 1553, Arch- 
bishop Hamilton, with the sanction of a papal bull, 
gave a new constitution to the college. It was to 
consist of a prsefect, or principal, who was to be a 
doctor or licentiate in theology ; of two other pro- 
fessors of theology, one a licentiate, the other a 
bachelor; of a professor of the canon law; of 
eight clerical students of theology, who were not 
only diligently to attend the theological lectures, 
but also to lecture themselves, and whose appoint- 
ments were tenable for six years ; of five regents, 
masters of arts, — that is, three professors of philo- 
sophy, one of rhetoric, and one of grammar ; and 
of sixteen poor scholars, students of philosophy ; 
besides certain college servants. A voice was 
given to the rector of the university in the elec- 
tion of the praefect and the chief professors of 



milVBRSITIES. 151 

the college; and the rector was empowered to 
visit the college annually. We perceive, therefore, 
that here, as at St. Salvator's, the supremacy of 
the original university was maintained. In all 
these foundations lodgings were provided for all 
the memhers within the college buildings : they 
were required to take their meals in common, and 
to wear an academical dress. 

The colleges remained without further change 
tilt the period of the Reformation, except that a 
professor of humanity was added to each of the 
colleges of St. Salvator and St. Leonard, answering 
to the grammatical professor at St. Mary's. In 
1579 their constitutions were entirely changed by 
the king and parliament, at the instance of the 
general assembly of the church, St. Mary's, with 
five masters, was made a theological school only ; 
and St. Salvator's and St. Leonard's were restricted 
to humanity and philosophy, each with a principal 
and four professors. But in 1621 the regulations 
of the original foundations were restored, except 
that St. Mary's was still to remain exclusively a 
theological school. It appears that in practice 
the other colleges continued to be schools of arts. 
Professorships of mathematics and of medicine 
were added in 1G68 and 1721. 

An important change was made in 1747, which 
was conceived and carried into effect with great 
judgment. St. Salvator's and Sl Leonard's, find- 



I 



152 ON THB ORIGIN OP 

ing their sejparate revenues insufficient for the 
maintenance of their professors, united thams^es 
into one college. By this union they were enabled, 
where there were duplicate offices, to retrench one 
of them, and either to consolidate the endowments, 
or to provide instruction in some new branch of 
learning. The united college consists of a prin- 
cipal and eight professors, all of whom, with the 
exception perhaps of the professor of medidne, 
may be considered as belonging to a faculty of 
arts. The medical professor lectures on chemis- 
try and chemical pharmacy. St. Mary's college 
remains distinct, and consists of the principal, and 
three professors, of divinity, of church history, and 
Hebrew. 

The two principals and the professors now con- 
stitute the whole senatus acadendcus, which is the 
governing body of the university* Since the aboli- 
tion of episcopacy, they elect their chancellor. We 
have described the mode of electing the rector, 
who must be one of the two principals, or one of 
the professors of divinity and ecclesiastical history. 
The colleges in their present form bear a re- 
semblance to the colleges of the faculties at Bo- 
logna. The members have long ceased to live 
in common. The bursaries still exist, that is, 
stipends are paid to certain poor scholars ; but 
they have no longer chambers in the college build- 
ings, nor live at any college table. The profes- 



UNIVERSITIES. 153 

sors of the united college now receive fees from 
their pupils ; but the professors of St. Mary's have 
no remuneration but their salaries by endowment, 
and a small grant of public money. In all the 
Scotch universities the theological professors ab- 
stain from taking fees. 

The University of Glasgow was established in 
1450, by a bull of Pope Nicolas V. issued at the re- 
quest of James II. Authority was given for the in- 
stitution of a general study for all faculties, and the 
university was empowered to grant degrees which 
should be valid throughout Christendom. The mem- 
bers of it were endowed with " all the liberties, im- 
munities, and honours enjoyed by the masters, doc- 
tors, and students of the University of Bologna." 
The effect of this bull was to make the constitution 
of the university the same as that of Bologna, so far 
as circumstances would allow. In 1453 a royal char- 
ter was granted by James II. with an exemption 
from taxes and all civil burthens ; and certain local 
privileges, of a similar nature, by the bishop of the 
diocese. 

The Archbishop of Glasgow was the chancellor 
of the university, and by His authority all its ho- 
nours were to be conferred. The supposts, a term 
which included all the members of the university, 
whether scholars or graduates, were distributed 
into four nations. The constitution of Bologna was 
imitated in the distinguishing character in which it 



154 ON THB ORIGIN OF 

differed from the Parisian model : the supreme 
power of the miiversity was vested in the assembly 
of all its members, — that is, of all the scholars who 
had been matriculated, and whose names remained 
upon the album. In these general meetings, called 
comitiay or congregations, the statutes were enacted, 
amended, or repealed. Each nation had its procu- 
rator, whom it elected annually; and the procurators 
were officers of considerable trust and power. The 
rector, likewise, was elected by the supposts assem- 
bled in their nations ; and this mode of appoint- 
ment is still in use. Four deputes were elected at 
the same time, like the four assessors at St. An- 
drew's, to form the council of the rector. The rec- 
tor, acting with the advice of the deputes, exercised 
supreme judicial and executive power over all the 
members of the university : he was invested with 
jurisdiction in all civil cases, and in lighter crimi- 
nal causes, in which any suppost was concerned ; 
graver offences were reserved for the jurisdiction 
of the bishop. According to the privilege granted 
to the scholars of Bologna by the Authentic of the 
Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, the supposts had the 
option of bringing their causes before the rector or 
the bishop : the magistrates of the town took a 
yearly oath to observe and defend the privileges of 
the university. In 1461 an ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion was conceded by the bishop to the rector ; a 



PNlVERSmES. 165 

which implies that the rector was always 
to be a person in holy orders. 

The university was entirely unendowed, and des- 
titute of public buildings. Its meetings were held 
in the chapter-house of the Black Friars, or in the 
cathedral. The teachers obtained schools for their 
lectures in the religious houses. One of the very 
earliest entries in the archives of the faculty of arts 
is a payment for repairs of a school in the monas- 
tery of the Black Friars. The students lodged in 
the houses of the citizens. It was regulated, as at 
Bologaa, Paris, and Cambridge, that lodgings should 
be let according to the arbitration of certain sworn 
umpires, consisting of an equal number of supposts 
and citizens; and no student was to be disturbed 
in the possession of his lodgings so long as he paid 
his rent, and lived in an orderly manner. 

Some efforts were made soon after the erectiou 
of the university to teach the civil and canon law, 
and we find mention occasionally of professors of 
theology ; but till the Reformation there seems to 
have been no regular course of instruction except 
in the faculty of arts. This faculty assumed a 
regular form under its proper dean, and had its 
peculiar statutes. Its archives are preserved 
from the very commencement of the uoiversily, 
beginning with the year 1451. The title prefixed 
to them is, " Annales Collegii PacuttatM Artium in 



156 ON THB ORIGIN OP 

Universitate Glasguensi." If this title is as old 
as the records themselves, the corporate faculty 
called itself a college; and possibly the college 
afler a time became a select body, which assumed 
the govenunent of the whole faculty, like the col- 
leges of faculties at Bologna. The exact imitation 
of all the customs of Bologna makes this suppo- 
sition probable. At all events, at that early period 
the term college had no reference to a building 
for common habitation, or an endowment for com- 
mon maintenance. 

The faculty, as we have mentioned, had its first 
school in the house of the Black Friars. In 1458 
it appears to have undertaken the building of a 
pcedagogium, at the expense of its common purse : 
but this design was set aside by the munificence 
of the first Lord Hamilton, who conveyed to the 
principal regent and other regents in trust, for the 
use of the faculty, certain buildings in the High 
Street of Glasgow, and some land in the neigh- 
bourhood. The body thus endowed he called his 
college, and ordained the commemoration of him- 
self and his wife as the founders. 

In this state the university remained for about 
a hundred years. By this time it appears, from 
the language of certain grants, that the university 
and the college of the faculty of arts were con- 
founded in common parlance. Two years before 
the Reformation, in 1557, Archbishop James Bea- 



UNIVERSITIES. 157 

toun conveyed an ecclesiastical benefice to the 
puBdagogium or university of Glasgow, and to the 
masters and regents in the same. Though the 
paedagogium was mentioned, it is manifest that 
this was a gifl to the whole university, and not to 
the exclusive college; for the principal was re- 
strained from granting leases of the property with- 
out the leave of the rector and dean of faculty, 
and of the other masters, as well as the regents. 
In 1563, Queen Mary gave lands and other pro- 
perty for the benefit of the college and university, 
and specially for the maintenance of five bursars. 
The grant recites, *' that a college and university 
was devised to be had in the city of Glasgow; 
but that part of the schools and chambers being 
built, the rest, as well dwellings as provisions for 
the poor bursars and masters to teach, ceased; 
so that the same appeared rather to be the decay 
of a university, than to be reckoned an established 
foundation." 

Hitherto the form oi the college had been de- 
termined only by its own regulations, or the enact- 
ments of the faculty at large. In 1572 the magis- 
trates of the town conveyed to the college certain 
church property which had been granted to them, 
but at the same time made a special foundation ; 
and this endowment and foundation were confirmed 
by act of parliament. In 1577, James VI. added 
largely to the endowments, and erected the college 



158 ON THB ORIGIN OF 

anew. The charter then granted is the basis of the 
present constitution. The college was to consist 
of the principal, three permanent regents, four poor 
scholars, a house steward and other servants. The 
principal was to be nominated by the crown : but if 
the crown neglected to appoint within thirty days, 
the nomination devolved upon the chancellor, rec- 
tor, dean of faculty, and the ministers of Glasgow 
and four other places. The rector, the dean of 
faculty, and the principal were to elect the regents. 
The same officers had a visitorial power over the 
regents, and might remove them. On the other 
hand, the rector, the dean of faculty, and the 
regents, might visit and admonish the principal; 
but he could be removed only by those electors 
to whom the right of appointment lapsed in case 
of failure by the crown. The rector, the dean of 
faculty, and the minister of Glasgow, were to in- 
spect and audit the college accounts every quarter, 
and to direct the application of the surplus re- 
venues for the benefit of the college. It is manifest 
that the intention of the charter was to place the 
college under the effectual superintendence of the 
university. A few years afterwards, an additional 
endowment was given by the archbishop, by which 
a fourth regent was supported, who was professor 
of GreeL About ther same time statutes were 
given by royal authority, which regulate both the 
university and college. 



WWlVEBSlTfES. io9 

A commission of visitation, appoioted by the 
general assembly of the cliurch of Scotland in 
1639, and renewed in subsequent years, recognised 
the existence of a professorahip of humanity, and 
instituted two proiessora of theology besides the 
principal. It appears that a professorship of medi- 
cine existed at that time. 

In 1727 a royal visitation made several import- 
ant regulations ; and especially, it sanctioned cer- 
tain powers which had been assumed by the fa- 
culty meetings in contradiction to the statutes, 
and which by this time had passed into usages. 
As the meetings of the faculty were now composed 
only of the professors, this interpretation tended to 
give the college greater power of self-government, 
and to remove it from the control of the ofticera of 
the university. 

The rights of the college and the university 
were submitted to tlie adjudication of the court of 
session in the years 1771 and 1772. The court 
declared, that the property and revenues of the 
college belonged to the principal and masters, and 
that the university court of the rector and his 
assessors had no power over them. This de- 
termination was in conformity with the charter, 
except that the rights of the foundation bursars 
and servants seemed to be overlooked. At the 
same time it fully recognised, according to the 
charter, the right of the rector, the dean of faculty, 



160 ON TUB ORIGIN OF 

and the mlDister of Glasgow, to audit the coU^ 
accounts, and to direct the expenditure ci the 
surplus revenue. It recognised the visitorial power 
of the rector and the dean of ^ulty ; but, in con- 
tradiction to the express terms of the charter, it de- 
clared the concurrence of the professors as well as 
the principal to be necessary for the censure of 
any professor. In like contradiction, it determined 
the right of election to the professorships, which the 
charter entrusted to the rector, the dean of faculty, 
and the principal, to be in the rector, the dean, 
and the faculty meeting, — that is, the professors 
themselves ; and, in fact, gave the chief power to 
the faculty meeting, so that they might proceed 
to election without the presence of the two chief 
officers of the imiversity. The faculty meeting 
was defined according to the statutes of 1727. 

The college profited by this determination of the 
right of election ; but the right of visitation in 
respect of its pecuniary afiairs and other matters, 
though thus fully recognised, has never been 
exerted. 

There seems to have been a constant tendency 
on the part of the college from the time of its 
foundation to withdraw itself from external autho- 
rity and superintendence. After the abolition of 
episcopacy, lay chancellors were appointed by the 
king ; but by the new statutes an oath was pre- 
scribed to the chancellor, in which a clause was 



DNIVEKSITIES, 161 

inserted debarring him from making any change 
in the university without the consent of its chief 
officers and the masters (that is, in practice, the 
regents of the college). In 1642 advantage was 
taken of the weak state of the royal prerogative to 
elect a chancellor; and the oifice has continued 
elective ever since. The principal of the college 
is usually nominated as vice-chancellor. The rec- 
tor anciently was necessarily an ecclesiastical per- 
son, and the same practice continued after the 
Reformation. The first lay rector was elected in 
1630 ; but a minister was more frequently appoint' 
ed, till, in 1717, a commission of royal visitation 
made the wholesome regulation that the rector 
should hold no other ofRce in the university, but at 
the same time enacted that no minister should be 
elected. The most certain mode of securing the 
personal performaoce of tlie duties of the office 
would have been to elect a minister of a neigh- 
bouring parish. Now it has become the custom 
to elect persons of rank who are non-resident ; 
and a vice-rector is deputed, trho is generally a 
professor. Tlie dean of faculty is elected by the 
senate ; and they generally elect a non-resident 
person. The power of visitation has thus become 
obsolete ; and even the inspection of the college 
accounts is performed very irregularly. At the 
date of the report of the last commission, the 



162 ox tVK OUGDI OP 

princqn] of the ooDege was himMlf minister of 



Hie distiDctian betw e en the muTera i ty and the 
college was finall j drawn in a smt whic^ arose in 
1807, out of the intdtntion bj royal mandate of a 
profetsorship of natural history in the university, 
and the appointment of Mr. Muirbead to the office. 
Mr. Moirhead daimed a right to participate in a]l 
die powers and priTfl^es of the fiunilty, and to be 
a member of die coDege. The collie denied the 
right of the crown to add to their corporation with- 
out their consent. The court of session adjudged, 
that Mr. Muirhead was a professor of the Uni- 
rersity of Glasgow, and endded to vote in the 
comitia and the senate; but that he was not a 
member of the college, and not entided to partici- 
pate in the enjojrment of its property, nor to vote 
in meetings of the &culty, nor in any meetings of 
the principal and masters. The report of the late 
commission of visitation impugns this judgment, 
and proceeds to argue against the pretensions of 
the college, on the ground that professorships in- 
stituted since the original charter have been con- 
sidered as pertaining to the college, and especially 
that the professor of astronomy, appointed in 1760, 
was allowed to be a member of the faculty and 
college. 

As the college is a royal foundation, and has 
always been subject to royal visitation and control, 




I'NIVEHSITIES. 

the assertion that the crown cannot add to its cor- 
poration seems indeed absurd and untenable ; but 
the court of session was not the less right in de- 
termining that an appointment to 
in the universit)' did not of itself convey incor- 
poration with the college. The determination that 
the new professor was not a member of the faculty, 
by which a distinction was made for the first time 
between the faculty — that is, tiie college of the fa- 
ctdb/ — and the whole body of actual teachers, seems 
much more questionable : but as it depends upon 
the acts of the royal commission of visitation in 
1727, by which faculty meetings were defined, and 
which are not given in the report, I cannot give 
a decided opinion upon it. Whether the professor 
of astronomy was allowed by error to become a 
member of the college, or whether the college waa 
expressly mentioned in the institution of the pro- 
fessorship, does not appear in the report 

None of the parties to this suit, not even those 
who ought to have been best informed, seem to 
bave understood their true position. Immediately 
■after its commencement, the lord advocate was 
elected rector of the university, and conceived 
himself obliged to appear in the anomalous predica- 
ment of opposing the claim which Mr. Muirhead 
rested upon a grant from the crown, fint the op- 
position was solely on the part of the college, of 
which the rector is not a member. He has con- 



I 



164 ON THB ORIGIN OP 

trol over it as a visitor, but is in no way bound 
to uphold its privileges, and least of all against 
another member of the university. 

Since this decision, four other r^us professors 
have been added to the university, for classes ci 
surgery, midwifery, chemistry, and botany; and 
restrictions have been introduced in their appoint- 
ments, which were intended to be in conformity with 
the judgment of the court of session. — 1. They 
are not to participate in the fends or privil^es 
of the college. The crown thus declines inter- 
ference with the existing corporation.* — 2. They 
are to have no vote in the election ci a professor. 
This point depends upon the powers and constitu- 
tion of the faculty meeting. The decisions of the 
court of session, by which the right of election, 
instead of being confined to the rector, dean, and 
principal, was extended to the faculty meeting, and 
by which the faculty meeting was limited to the 
members of the college, are both of questionable 
validity. — 3. They are to take no part in the ex- 
amination of candidates for medical degrees, nor 
receive any part of the fees paid for them.* This 
is an absurd restriction, and proceeds upon the in- 
veterate misapprehension and confesion of the pro- 

* The main object of the restriction is p<Hnted out in the 
last clause. These professors have been invited by the college, 
to examine, and as members of the senate they assist in the 
ceremony of conferring the degrees. 



UKirERBITIBB. V65 

vinces of tlie college and the univerBity. The 
college never had the power of granting degrees ; 
they are conferred by the university, and all the 
members of the academical senate ought to take 
part in bestowing them. 

Under the present practical constitution of the 
university and college, the coinitia, or general con- 
gregations of the university, are held only for the 
election of the rector, and for some other public 
and formal acts. The government of the university 
is administered by the senatus academicus, which 
consists of the rector and the dean of faculty, who 
are seldom present, the principal and thirteen pro- 
fessors of the college, and the five regius professors 
of the university. The affairs of the college are 
administered by the faculty meeting, which is com- 
posed of the principal and college professors. The 
ordinary academical discipline is managed by a 
court composed of the principal and the five pro- 
fessors whose chairs are of oldest foundation. This 
is a matter of usage, which seems to have arisen 
from a reluctance, like that manifested in the case 
of Mr. Muirhead, to allow new professors to share 
the powers of the older members of the corpora- 
tion. However, the arrangement is convenient, 
inasmuch as the classes of these professors are 
those which are most frequented by the younger 
pupils. 

Tlie studentA of these same classes wear an aca- 



166 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

demic dress: the bursars receive their stipends, 
but neither lodge nor board within the college. 

The University of Old Aberdeen was founded in 
1494, according to the models of Paris and Bologna. 
The example of Paris seems to have been mainly 
followed. The supposts were divided into four 
nations, who seem to have elected their procura- 
tors ; but they took no further part in elections, or 
in the government of the university, the procurators 
acting as their representatives. The turbulence 
incident to the general congregations of Bologna 
and Glasgow was thus avoided. The college was 
founded in 1505, and new-modelled in 1531. In 
its constitution it closely resembled the colleges of 
St. Andrew's and Glasgow, especially St. Mary's 
college at St. Andrew's. The relation between the 
college and the university is distinctly marked in 
the foundation charter, in which it is recommended 
that the permanent and higher offices of the college 
should be supplied from tlie inferior members of 
it, if they be qualified ; if not, from members of the 
University of Aberdeen ; and if none of them be 
qualified, from members of other universities. The 
rector and his assessors were empowered to visit 
the college annually. As elsewhere, however, the 
university has disappeared, except the incorporated 
and endowed college. The college is as extensive 
as the university ; or rather, the university is limited 
to the extent of the college ; nor is any distinction 



DNIVBHSITIBB. 167 

preserved, as at Glasgow. The university and col- 
lege are governed by tlie senatus academicus. 

Marischal college in New Aberdeen, which claims 
to be a separate university, was founded in 1593. 
Jt was a college from the beginning, with endow- 
ments for certain memberB. The founder, William 
Earl Marischal, directed the principal to confer the 
degree of master of arts upon students who de- 
served it ; and as the deed of foundation has been 
confirmed by more than one act of parliament, 
the college is an authorised university. It now 
confers degrees in all the faculties-^by what autho- 
rity is not stated : probably the clause in the first 
act of confirmation, which grants to it all Hberties 
which are known to pertain to any college within 
the realm, was supposed to warrant this practice. 
It is likely that coUege was taken at that time aa 
synonymous with vniversity : or if the power of 
granting degrees, bestowed by the popes on the 
colleges of St. Salvator and St. Mary at St. An- 
drew's, was recognised in law and practice, the 
literal interpretation of the statute would convey 
the right. 

The College or University of Edinburgh deserves 
particular notice, for its celebrity as a place of 
education, and for its singular constitution. In 
1582, James VI. empowered the provost and town- 
council of Edinburgh to repair and build houses 
for the reception and habitation of professors of all 



163 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

the faculties and of cmy other liberal sciences, and 
schools for teaching the students. The council is 
invested with the right of appointing the professors, 
'< wUk the advice of the mmigters" and with the right 
of removing them if it sees cause. The town- 
council proceeded to act upon this licence, and 
opened an academy, at first under a single regent, 
augmenting the number of teachers from time to 
time, according to the increase in the number of 
students. In 1584 the king granted property, not 
to the college, but to the magistrates and town- 
council for the benefit of the college; and in 1612 
he gave a charter confirming all that they had 
done. In 1621 an act of parliament was passed, 
ratifying the royal endowments and the erection of 
the college as a college for the profession of theo- 
logy, philosophy, and humanity, and granting << in 
favour of the burgh of Edinburgh, patron of the 
said college, and of the regents and students in the 
same, all liberties and privileges pertaining to any 
college within the realm." It is probably on this 
authority that it confers degrees. 

The college is in every respect subject to the. 
magistrates and town-council. No constitution 
was given to it like those of other universities. It 
has no chancellor. A rector is not named in the 
early deeds or charters, or the act of confirmation, 
in such a way as to be distinguished from the prin- 
cipal of the college. Rectors were nominated occa- 



UNIVERSITIES. 16ft 

sionaily by the council, but not regularly, till, in ihe 
year 1640, they resolved to elect a rector annually, 
with six assessors, — two of the council, two minis- 
ters, and two members of the college. But in the 
beginning of the next century the office of rector 
was permanently annexed to that of lord provost; 
and as the provost, as the head and organ of the 
council, had already all the authority which could 
be deputed to the rector, the office has becomft. 



The town council are the absolute patrons of the. 
professorships of their own institution, and of the 
office of principal The clause in the original 
charter, which directs them to elect " with the, 
advice ot the ministers, ' is ineffectual as a legal ob- 
ligation. They generally request such advice for 
their private guidance in the appointment of a pro- 
fessor of divinity. The college consists at present 
of twenty-six professors, of whom twelve are ap.o 
pointed by the town-council, and eight by the 
crown. The professor of botany holds commissions 
from both, and in fact unites two professorships in 
his own person. The appointments to the remain- 
ing five are of a mixed nature, but the lown-couocil 
has a voice in all. The senatus academicus con- 
sists of the principal and all the professors. This 
body is not legally constituted by any of the ori- 
ginal deeds, but takes upon itself to act only by 
usage. The pretensions of the senatus to act with 



I 
I 



170 ON THE ORIGIN OF 

an iudependent authority were brought to a legal 
decision in 1825 and 1826, when the court of 
session determined, that the sole government of 
the university in all points, even in regulating the 
conditions of graduation, the course of study, and 
method of instruction, is vested in the town-coun- 
cil. Nevertheless, the senate has been accustomed 
from time to time to make regulations in minor 
matters, and especially in points connected with 
education, for the guidance of the professors and 
students : and these are considered as valid, unless 
they are disallowed by the council ; but the coun- 
cil can rescind them at any time. There is no 
legal establishment of faculties. In early times the 
whole body of teachers was called " the faculty," 
the professors then probably all belonging to the 
faculty of arts. Afterwards the faculty of arts 
and the faculty of theology were distinguished by 
usage; and faculties of law and medicine have 
assumed a form more recently. There are some 
professorships not assigned to any faculty. The 
distribution of the professorships into faculties de- 
pends either upon the faculties themselves, or the 
senate, to which they are altogether subordinate. 
The faculties hold meetings, especially on matters 
of graduation; but they merely prepare business 
for the senate, without the sanction of which none 
of their propositions have any force. The principal 



VNlVERSiTIES. 171 

convenes the faculty of theology: the other fa- 
culties elect their own deans or conveners. 

By the entire subjection of the University of 
Edinburgh to the town -council, the professors are 
relieved from all care of financial concerns, and of 
lands and buildings. It might be supposed, ante- 
cedently to experience, that such matters would 
not be weU managed by bodies of literary men ; 
and the experience of the other universities, as de- 
veloped in the report, amply confirms the suppo- 
sition. The council not only fills the vacant chairs, 
and tlius preserves the university from the abuses 
of a self-elected corporation, but it can at any 
time institute any new professorship which it 
thinks to be for the advantage of science and ge- 
neral education ; nor can the existing professors 
maintain any monopoly of teaching, or close their 
society against the new member. The council has 
the discretion to leave matters of discipline and 
ordinary detail to the principal aud professors, 
while by its superintending power it can effectually 
check any such practices as self-governed corpora- 
tions are apt to fall into, tending to the present 
benefit of the individual members rather than to 
the permanent benefit of the whole body. Such 
an external governing body may extend its 
■till further, and look not only to the permanent 
advantage of the university, but to the wants and 



I 

J 



172 ON TflK ORIGIN OF 

interests of society at large: a comprdieiisive 
view, which eyen if the members of an academic 
bodj desired to take, their habits would probablj 
render them miable to rise to a sufficient hei^ 
above dieir ordinary sphere of viuon. 

Such are some of the manifest advantages of lodg- 
ing the supreme power cf the university in a body 
distinct from the academic senate; and much of 
the utility and success of the University of Edin- 
burgh may be fairly ascribed to this peculiari^ in 
its constitution* But though the theory in its 
general form is good, it is obvious that a town- 
council is not the best governing body for a uni- 
versity ; and one very great objection is, that the 
government of the -university is very far from being 
its chief care. At Edinburgh, moreover, too little 
authority seems to be given to the academic body. 
But if we were to imagine a university, in which 
the ordinary discipline, and the details inseparable 
from the business of education, should be entrusted 
to the body of professors ; in which they should be 
entitled to tender their advice upon the election to 
vacant chairs, the institution of new professorships, 
and other graver matters, but without a final 
voice ; in which all financial business, and the su- 
preme government of the university, and the ad- 
ministration of its patronage, should be committed 
to a body of gentlemen chosen expressly and solely 
for that purpose, responsible for the due discharge 



UNIVERSITIES. 173 

of their functions, and bound to make an annual 
report of their management; we should form the 
idea of a well-balanced academic constitution, and 
of such an university as would be likely to be an 
effective instrument for the difiiision of education 
and the advancement of science. This constitu^ 
tion is realized in the University of London. 



THE END. 



LONDON ^ 
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BEMTLBT, 

Donet Street, Fleet Street. 



WORKS 

PRINTED FOR JOHN TAYLOR, 

BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHEB TO THE UNIVSBSITr OF LONDOlTi 

UPPER GOWER STREET. 



I. 

NIEBUHR*S HISTORY OF ROME. Vol. II. 

Translated by Julius C. Hare, M.A., and Connop Thirl-w all, 
M. A., Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. 8vo. 16s. 

NIEBUHR'S HISTORY OF ROME. Vol. I. 

Second Edition, revised, with the Corrections and Additions 
made in the Third Edition of the Original. 8vo. 16s. 

" Here we close our remarks upon this memorable work ; a work 
which, of all that have appeared in our age, is the best fitted to excite 
men of learning to intellectual activity ; from which the most accom- 
plished scholar may gather fresh stores of knowledge, to which the most 
experienced politiciaja may resort for theoretical and practical instruction, 
and which no person can read as it ought to be read, without feeling the 
better and more generous sentiments of his common himian nature 
Milivened and strengthened."— £d«n6«rjrA Review, Jan. 1833. 

II. 

A VINDICATION OF NIEBUHR'S HISTORY OF 
ROME from the Charges of the Quarterly Review. By Julius 
Charles Hare, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
8vo. 2s. 6d, 

I. 

CARY'S DANTE. 

THE VISION, or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante 
Alighieri ; translated by the Rev. H. F. Cary, A. M. Third 
Edition. In 3 vols, foolscap Bvo. 18s. cloth. 

" Mr. Gary's translation— the best we ever read of any work." — 

Quarterly Review, July 1823. 

II. 
THE BIRDS OF ARISTOPHANES, 

Translated into English Verse, with Notes. By the Rev. K«¥ « 
Cary, A. M., Author of the TraD&\a\\ou ol T>vclM^. ^^^« ^«.^A.* 



2] 9ictrs. 

UI. 

THE AGAMEMNON OF iESCHYLUS, 

Translated, vnth Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By Johx 
Symmo!«8, a. M., of Christ Church, Oxford. 8to. 8s. 



I. 

ELEMENTS OF ALGEBRA. 

By Augustus De Morgan, Esq. Intended as a continua- 
tion of the Elements of Arithmetic. Royal 12mo. 

n. 

THE ELEMENTS OF ARITHMETIC. 

By Augustus De Morgan, Esq. Second Edition, consi- 
derably enlarged, 12mo. 3s. 6d. doth. 

III. 
LESSONS ON NUMBER. 

As given at a Pestalozzian School at Cheam, Surrey. Second 

Edition. 

The Master's I^Ianual. 12mo. 4s. 6d. cloth. 1 (Sold 
The Scholar's Fraxij. 12mo. 2s. bound, /separately.) 

IV. 

PRINCIPLES OF GEOMETRY, 

Familiarly illustrated, and applied to a variety of useful pur- 
poses. Designed for the Instruction of young Persons. By the 
Kev. Professor Ritchie, LL.D. F.R.S. 12mo. with 150 Wood- 
cuts. 3s. 6d. cloth. 

V. 

THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID ; 

Witli a Commentary and Geometrical Exercises. By the Rev. 
DiONYSius Lardnek, LL.D. Fourth Edition, 8vo. 7s. boards. 

VI. 

AN ANALYTICAL TREATISE ON PLANE AND 
SPHERICAL TRIGONOMETRY. 

By the Rev. Dionvsius Lardner, LL.D. Second Edition, 
Corrected and improved. 8vo. I2s. cloth. 

Vll. 

AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON THE DIFFEREN- 
TIAL AND INTEGRAL CALCULUS. 

By the Rev. Diohysixis 'LMiT>i(cik,\A^^% ^i^.^\%« 



1 



It 



'.li 
-i 
i 

J 



:; 

I! 
I' 

i! 

.11 



i 



^ 



■^ 



1 1